ANWR Animals

We also saw several animals besides birds while in the ANWR. Most abundant were feral hogs and alligators. There were three alligators sunning on the bank across Jones Lake, one quite large, but they were too distant for a cell phone photo, so the photo below is from a birding trip to Padre Island.(Oops! Correction: The photo below was taken at ANWR but is from the Internet. I was too lazy to hunt through my blog photos to find the feral hog photo that Deb took on our birding trip to Padre.)

Feral Hog at ANWR. Packs of them—some with large litters of piglets (we saw a pair with 10 piglets)—dig up pond and lake shorelines and marshes. This Internet photo shows one accompanied by a Great-tailed Grackle

Hog rooted up edge to Jones lake.

Each morning on the way to the field we would see white-tailed deer crossing the road in small groups or see them during our field work as Terri's photo below shows. One evening, we were exiting the park, when the group of us in the van was stopped because a motorcyclist had crashed and a helicopter, a fire truck, and an ambulance were at the scene. We speculated that perhaps the crash occurred because the cyclist was trying to avoid a deer. The speed limit in the park is only 25 mph.

Terri Tipping's photo of White-tailed Deer in the salt marsh

Mike Brady's photo of a fine male white-tail with nice antlers

Or the cyclist may have been trying to avoid a raccoon or possum, both of which we also saw crossing the road. Each evening—but the one on which Barb decided to get a photo of it—we would see an armadillo rooting around near the entrance to the park, and fox squirrels were common among the acorns dropped by the live oaks. Once, on returning in the boat from field work, Mary spotted a family of coyotes walking along the raised berm shortly before we entered the canal to the boathouse. We all feared for the family of whooping cranes nearby, but Jeff assured us that these big birds could fend for themselves.

Two of my favorite sightings were of dolphins and a glass lizard. Dolphins swam in the Skimmer’s wake and were seen occasionally on our boat observations; and we found a glass lizard on the trail. Once, while out with Jeff in the Sam Houston State University boat, a curious dolphin checked us out, getting close and raising its eye out of the water so that it could see what the heck was going on because Jeff was rubbing his fingers along the side of the boat underwater making squealing/squeaking noises.

The dolphin that came in to check us out when Jeff made squeaking noises on the side of the boat; Photo Mike Brady

Glass lizards are interesting. They are legless lizards that resemble snakes . . . until one catches their blunt noses and cute smiles. They differ from snakes also because they have movable eyelids, external ear openings, and inflexible jaws. They are called glass lizards because they can shed their tails (which are more than half the lizard’s length) to foil predators. The tail can shatter into pieces that break off like glass. Each piece squirms and wiggles to attract the predator while the lizard stays motionless and eventually gets away. The glass lizard we found crossing the trail had already used this defensive technique as it was short and had no tapering tail. The new tail grows back slowly over a period of months to years I’ve learned.

When we first moved to Oklahoma, I found a glass lizard when mowing the lawn. I knew immediately that it was not a snake. This one, too, had already lost its tail, so when I picked it up, it had nothing more to lose. Looking back, I am glad. If, when I picked it up its tail had broken off and squirmed around in the grass, I would have squirmed around, too. 

Internet photo of a Glass Lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus),with an intact tail. 

Mike and Lindsay made one of the most talked about sightings. It was a fleeting look at best, but the two determined that what they had seen crossing the road behind Jeff’s truck was a cat. I thought Lindsay said that the animal was about the size of a chocolate lab (I kidded her about the chocolate part) but Mike says that it was about the color of a chocolate lab. Anyway, their best guess was that it was a Gulf Coast jaguarundi, a cat native to Mexico, that is a little smaller than a housecat, and with a small head and long body and tail. It is said to resemble more an otter than a cat. If they did see a jaguarundi, this is wonderful news! The last confirmed sighting of this subspecies in the U.S. was 30 years ago in April of 1986.

Note the long body and small head of the jaguarundi in these Internet pix. These animals can be chocolate lab colored also.