One of my favorite places to hike that is near to where I live, is Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, which is to the northwest of Austin in central Texas. The wildlife refuge is US government owned and exists to preserve habitat for endangered species. In the case of Balcones Canyonlands, the two main endangered species are a couple of songbirds: the Golden-cheeked Warbler and the Black-capped Vireo. These birds nest in Texas in the spring and rely on a type of habitat that is unique to the central Texas hill country. Their habitat requires old growth Ashe Juniper and Oaks with nearby water. Much of this habitat has been destroyed in favor of ranching and urban development so these two birds are classified as endangered.

Since the refuge was created in the 90s, it has been able to buy up thousands of acres of property in an area rich in habitat for these birds. The wildlife refuge is still actively seeking to buy property and can pay market prices, but must wait for land to come on the market and then they must compete with developers. In the last 20 years or so, much of this land has become a ripe target for housing developers so it is an increasing difficult task for the refuge.

In the map below you can see refuge property in blue with the large Austin suburbs of Leander and Cedar Park to the east. I live in Leander, which is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, and Leander’s extra-territorial jurisdiction extends to the refuge. The red arrow on the map points to my favorite local place to go hiking, a part of the refuge called Doeskin Ranch which is open to the public for free. There is another area with trails closer to Leander, but I prefer the trails out at Doeskin Ranch and find it worth the drive.

Being a long-time hiker of the refuge, I decided that I would try to get involved with an organization called Friends of Balcones Canyonlands and maybe do a little volunteer work. I have volunteered for some trail maintenance when it hasn’t been cancelled due to weather, but another interesting service they offer is guided hikes. Some of the guided hikes are on parts of the refuge that are not open to the public and I have been on a couple of these so far. The hikes generally include guides who are naturalists and can talk about the plants and wildlife. These hikes are open to anyone who signs up and shows up and can be a fun way to spend a Sunday morning.

The most recent hike I attended was on a part of the refuge that I had never before been on. It was about 8 miles of hiking through the hills on trails that were once rugged unpaved ranch roads so it wasn’t a casual walk in the park. Nobody on the hike seemed to have any real trouble navigating the rough trails and hills though and we did find a few shady spots to stop and rest. It was a very warm morning for February and I ended up in short sleeves with sunscreen. The photo below shows a few people hiking down the hilly trail.

I was also looking at the place with an eye toward photography. It was too early in the year for the songbirds to have returned from Central America, but I thought that there might be some landscape opportunities. Shooting photos as part of a moving group in the midday sun makes it very difficult to spend time finding compositions and shooting in good light, but I did my best. Below is a photo with a hill in the distance with some haze in the atmosphere that provides a sense of depth. This was mainly a snapshot along the trail and I didn’t have a lot of time to find an interesting foreground.

Another interesting aspect of the trail was seeing the fossils of past wildlife, as in wildlife from tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Back before the dinosaurs went extinct or got in their spaceships and flew away, this part of Texas was covered by a sea and so parts of the trails we were on traversed exposed ancient seabed. The area is littered with fossils of ancient sea creatures. One of the largest and most interesting fossils I saw was that of an ancient sea snail. The photo below shows this fossil sitting along side the trail.

We had a nice hike of about 4 hours across the former sea floor and ranch land. Mainly just saw some wrens and cardinals as it was a bit early in the year for the other birds. It was fun to see the hill country this far out of town and think about what it was like a few hundred years ago or a few hundred million years ago.