King Ranch

The alarm rang at 4:45 am on Friday. It was the day we were to spend on King Ranch in South Texas. After a quick breakfast, we took a dark 1½ hour drive to the south gate of King Ranch to join an all-day birding tour. King Ranch is an over 800,000-acre ranch, which takes up almost an entire county in Texas. Established over a hundred years ago by Captain King, who made his money as a river boat captain, he and his widow kept buying land till they owned the largest ranch in the country. The ranch is still active, and makes its money from 3 primary sources—ranching, with between 50,000 and 60,000 head of cattle; oil and gas leases; and wildlife hunting, with hunters paying over $5500 for trophy white tail deer. Interesting fact: they have imported nilgai—antelope from India—which practice communal defecation, resulting in large dung piles.

We--Joy Anema, Marlene Cook, Carrie and I--greatly enjoyed our day of birding there. The weather was absolutely beautiful, sunny with temps reaching the mid 70’s. The rolling hills and live-oak trees with trailings of Spanish moss gave it a real ranch feel. We were part of a group of 15, with two expert birding guides and two vans. The highlights were seeing the ferruginous pygmy owl, the tropical parula, the great horned owl and the blue grouse beak (spotted by beginning birder Joy). We saw 74 species in total—and a diamond-backed rattler! When we got back to South Padre Island we went out to the convention center, a prime birding spot, hoping for a 100-specie day, but ended up at 96. Great fun anyway.