The Wildlife of Kings

A Tour of the King Ranch

This morning we drove to the King Ranch Visitor Center for our prescheduled one-and-a-half-hour tour of the famous King Ranch in Kingsville, Texas.

My first tidbit of advice is to preschedule. The tours book up fast.

Before we even reached the parking lot, two beautiful white-tailed deer crossed our path and posed for several photos. What a great way to start a wildlife tour. Oh, wait. This isn’t necessarily a wildlife tour.

As we were in the Visitor Center, I saw a sign for a three-and-a-half-hour wildlife tour. I told Rich I would love to do that. My main thing is wildlife and nature. But we were signed up for the normal tour. Rich said no, this tour would have to do.

Well, who needs to go on a special wildlife tour anyway. We saw so much wildlife on this tour that I was more than satisfied.

The tour started off with a view of a flock of wild turkeys off to the left.

We were in a tour bus, and all my photos were taken through the window beside me as we were driving by, so they aren’t the best. I tried to take good pictures. But alas, I took what I could get.

What would a tour of the King Ranch be without some horses, cows, and Longhorns? Did you know that the females have longer horns than the males, and they use them to protect their young calves from predators?

I know they aren’t technically wildlife because they are domesticated, but they are animals, so I am throwing them in.

A little further down the road, we saw a couple more wild turkeys roaming around.

A young white-tailed buck showed off his horns for us before running off.

Further down the road there were two more white-tailed bucks thinking about showing off for the ladies.

Either that or the younger buck was stupid enough to think he had a chance over the larger buck.

I caught a picture of a white-throated sparrow, but the picture I tried to get of the road runner, also known as a chaparral bird, was too blurry. Remember, we were in a moving vehicle. But we did see two of them.

That’s okay though because just down the road were three Sandhill cranes by a small pond of water.

And a huge peacock strutted around close to the vehicle as we drove slowly by.

All of a sudden one of the men on the other side of the bus pointed out some pigs. Actually, there were several Javelinas running around with a herd of cows. Javelinas travel in small family groups, which is probably what this was. There were about five of them. Only one of them was clear enough to zoom in on.

Then the same man pointed out a couple of larger hogs. It took a while, but the driver finally admitted she thought they were either wild feral hogs or Eurasian wild boars because their legs were much longer and they were a lot larger than the smaller Javelinas. Look closely at their legs. They were too far away to really tell for sure, but I zoomed in as best I could. You’ll have to ignore the pregnant cow.

And last but not least, I am going to include a photo of the water where there were supposed to be several alligators. We were told that years ago one of the cowhands brought five alligators to the ranch and set them free. Now there are hundreds of them. I didn’t see any but look closely and maybe you will.

What more wildlife could you ask for on a short one-and-a-half-hour trip through a ranch?