So I made it to Laguna Atascosa NWR. Why you ask? Where is this you ask? It is a national wildlife refuge located at the southern tip of Texas, between Harlingen and South Padre island.
It's main claim to fame is it's resident, the rare (atleast in the States) Ocelot. Which is a small feline located mainly in Mexico and South America. It declined due to loss of habitat, roads, and ranchers killing them, pushing it almost entirely out of the U.S. My friend, Jacquie, just started as an intern working on the Ocelot project down at LANWR. I went down to visit her and check out the refuge.
For more information you can check its wiki page.
There are two important points to know about this visit:
1. With the tropical storm hitting right in this area, and the thick vegetation added to an already marshy area, this created the worst infestation of mosquitoes I have yet been witness too.
2. Despite #1, fell in love with this area
Almost immediately as I arrived at the refuge, I had to get field ready, as I was joining Jacquie to night track Ocelots. This turned into quite an interesting night as we walked around surrounded by the bomber-plane like buzz of hundreds of mosquitoes coming to feast on us. Even with gallons of bugspray, the whole experience becomes a full on psychological nightmare.
The good side to the night also turned out to be the bugs. As we roamed around the paths in the dead of night, through the scrub land, the lightning bugs joined us. And not just a few, but easily as many as there were mosquitoes. As you turn you see 10's of lightning bugs going off in random sequence in any direction. It clearly is something to experience.
Other notables were:
The Texas Tortoise and his adorable inability to run away from me fast en
ough before I caught him (sorry no pic provided)The Pauraque's sitting in the road, flying up quickly as you drive by. Pauraque's are insect eating birds very similiar to Chuck-Wills Widdows. This happens to be more common than I imagined. As other nightjars do, they enjoy sitting on the ground, and what better place than a clear road.
The parks rabbit problem, as everywhere you look there are rabbits scurrying back into the brush
The next day we went down to South Padre to check out the beach. Now I've spent most of my teenage
summers down at Port Aransas, so while this was only a slight upgrade, it still is always nice to go down to the beach.
The highlight is our friend the Willet deciding to join us. (Try the zoom in for better effect)
That evening, Jacquie took me to her favorite spot to watch the sunset. There sat a small gazebo overlooking a large lake (whose name escapes me), with the banks of the lake surrounded by tall grass and small trees. As we sat there, 20-30 dragonflies flew around the gazebo feasting on any bugs that may have hindered the moment. It truly was one of the most peaceful things I've experienced. The world seemed to move slower, as the clouds slowly moved past the setting sun:
Continues I will post some of my favorite pictures from that night:
Here's what Windows Live Photo gallery did with all the photo's together. Not too bad, though I had to do some cropping. You have to click on it to truly enjoy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment