Austwell-Aransas Whooping Crane Lodge

10/13/2026

They stand nearly five feet tall, they migrate about 2,500 miles, and every fall they come back to the Texas coast: whooping cranes are returning. 🦢

These elegant white birds with black wingtips and red crowns nest in Canada and spend winter in the marshes around the Aransas area on the Texas Gulf Coast. Only a few hundred wild whooping cranes make this trip, which makes each sighting feel truly special. They are North America's tallest birds, and their story is one of the great comeback efforts in American conservation. 🌾

If you plan a trip, look for guided boat tours and wildlife viewing areas, bring binoculars, and keep a respectful distance from the birds so they can feed and rest. Cooler months from late fall through winter are the best time to look. 🔭

Have you ever seen a whooping crane in person?

08/25/2026

With Christina Biery – I just made it onto their weekly engagement list by being one of their top engagers! 🎉

08/21/2026

You are 2 miles from the entrance of the refuge from the lodge.

Fewer than a thousand whooping cranes exist in the wild anywhere on the planet, and a meaningful chunk of them choose to spend their winters wading the salt marsh at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Rockport. 🦢 Standing five feet tall with a wingspan over seven feet, they're the tallest bird in North America, and watching a family of three move through golden marsh grass at sunrise is the kind of thing that stops conversation.

The population came back from the brink of extinction, down to just a couple dozen birds in the 1940s, through decades of habitat protection along this exact stretch of Texas coastline. Every winter the cranes make the roughly twenty-four hundred mile trip down from Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada to these same marshes, often returning to the same territory year after year with the same mate. Refuge staff and volunteers still track individual birds, some of them for over a decade.

There's something humbling about watching a species claw its way back from twenty-something birds to a population you can actually witness firsthand on a quiet coastal morning. Have you ever seen whooping cranes in person, or is Aransas somewhere still on your list? 🌾

08/20/2026

08/16/2026

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1435812486818341583?viralityEntryPoint=1&s=76&adults=1&unique_share_id=0AF930BF-5C11-4EAA-8D61-B92FFE12EF28

08/14/2026

Christina Biery
Labor Day weekend is still available. Fishing won’t disappoint. Come see us.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1435812486818341583?viralityEntryPoint=1&s=76&adults=1&unique_share_id=0AF930BF-5C11-4EAA-8D61-B92FFE12EF28

08/13/2026

Christina Biery

07/04/2026

Happy 4th from the lodge

06/26/2026

The lodge is open check it out. Let’s go fishing.

06/22/2026

Christina Biery


The waters at the lodge are hoppin