On Friday we went to the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center. Originally we were going to go to SpaceX, but Dad wasn’t feeling well and we didn’t want to go without him, so instead we left him behind and went to the nature center instead. Most of the animals there were not captive, and it was so cool to see the native wildlife.
The amount of birds was absolutely crazy, you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing one. Most of them were ducks although there were others. They had a super long boardwalk with stops along the way with signs about the birds in the area. Somehow, at almost every stop we found at least one of the birds on the sign! My favorite bird we saw was a green heron. They are much smaller than their more famous cousin, the great blue heron, but I think that they are even cooler, mostly because I prefer their coloration. There were also ibises, spoonbills and egrets, as well as the previously mentioned great blue herons.
The birds were really cool, but the main attraction was the alligators for sure. We didn’t see any wild ones, although apparently they are in the area. Actually, after the boardwalk there was an alligator show inside and the wildlife biologist who was doing the talk said that they can even be found in Oklahoma! The largest alligator ever found was actually found there, and it was more than fifteen feet long! However, most adult males generally only grow to around twelve feet long. The reason that the nature center has alligators is that they are part of an organization that takes alligators that are becoming a problem out of the wild and they have a big zoo like place called Gator Country in Beaumont, TX. This place in South Padre takes the younger gators that they catch and raises them until they are around six feet long, them sends them to Beaumont. It was very interesting and we had a lot of fun.
