Wild In Willacy: Hunke Ranch open for public tours

RAYMONDVILLE - A great egret sat stooped on a piece of driftwood.

Butterflies perched on flower stems while cattle grazed and roamed about the Hunke Ranch.

Saturday, owner Karen Hunke opened the ranch for public tours during this week's Wild In Willacy event. The ranch tours have been given for 10 years, Valley Nature Center Director and tour guide Martin Hagne said.

"Over the years Wild In Willacy has evolved into a heritage festival that has to do a lot with the culture and the people," Hagne said. "Focusing on nature was great but we only brought in certain people. Opening it up as a heritage event and going in to see all the different ranches gives everybody a chance to come out and see what we've got."

The ranch lies between Hidalgo and Willacy counties and serves as a border to the King Ranch.

Tour guide Roy Rodriguez said that because of its geographical position, the ranch is a prime location to see a diversity of animal life.

"The four-county area of the Rio Grande Valley is the most bio-diverse in the country," he said. "Because of the overlapping habitats we have more plants and animals than anyone else of a similar (geographical) size. This is great because many people don't get to see the privately owned ranches."

Ranch tours led by Hagne and Rodriguez were met with enthusiasm by local birders and nature lovers.

"We want to see everything at this ranch," Iowa native Ramona Sommerlot said. "I am interested in birds and animals. I do a lot of birding in the area."

Harlingen native Javier Medrano said he had been planning to take the ranch tour since last year.

"I love nature and I've always wanted to come to this," Medrano said. "I am very excited to be here."

"I like the plants best," Harlingen resident Loretta Kruse said. "I'm originally from Nebraska and I have a garden there. I came here to see plants and animals that are unique to this area."

Unique animals are not hard to come by at the ranch, Hagne said.

"Hunke ranch has a lot of deer, javalinas, armadillos and other small mammals," he said. "They also have a really nice system of ponds where you can see water birds."

One of the Hunke Ranch's main attractions is the ferruginous pygmy owl, Hagne said. The 6-inch birds can usually be seen during their day hunts, he said.

"They go out during the day and hunt but there's no way to know if they're going to be where we're going to be," Hagne said.

The ranch owners have used nesting boxes to help grow the pygmy owl population to its current size, but there were some problems concerning predators.

"We have about 90 boxes now," Hunke said. "We started putting the boxes in trees and the owls found them and nested in them but we had problems with raccoons and snakes so we put them in the tree canopies on aluminum poles."

But the owls' problems didn't end with raccoons and Snakes, Hunke said.

"Screech-owls came in and ripped the heads off of some of the females," she said. "They didn't eat them or anything. So we cut the box holes smaller and we haven't had any problems since. We have now banded about 450 owls."

Bird banding is the practice of placing identification rings around birds' legs to study the specimens at different points in their lives. Banding rates also help determine population in a specific area, Hunke said.

"We have tried to develop this land for habitat and wildlife," she said. "It's about 4,000 acres, which is about all we can take here. It's just been an ongoing project."