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The Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary was founded in 1967 and is located on the south edge of McKinney, Texas close to Fairview, Texas. The sanctuary and and natural science museum sits on 289 acres with the purpose of educating children about nature. This non profit private organization’s mission is to “bring nature and people together to discover, enjoy, experience, restore, and preserver our priceless environment.” – Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary, About Page.
Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary
March of 2018 my wife, her family, and myself visited the Heard Museum for the first time. We explored the museum before exploring the hiking trails. We spent about 30 minutes in the museum looking at the artifacts and the animal on display.
There is a lot of interesting information on display and most of the items on displayed are from the North Texas area. Its worth a stop if you are bringing the children or wanting to take on the property.
One of my favorite exhibits was watching the two resident male lemurs in their exhibit. These little guys know how to play and put on a show!
Plan on spending about 30 minutes to an hour in the museum. There is a lot of information to read and learn about.
In addition to the hiking trails there is a small area where wildlife is kept on display. They have a mixture of predator and prey animals.
To learn more about the sanctuary, museum and, entry fees, and their programs make sure to check out Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary website.
Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary – Hiking Trails
The hiking trails at the Heard Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary is about 3 and half miles round trip. The Hoot Owl Trail starts near the main building and it will connect to you the next trail. Each trail is connected and they will take you across the entire wildlife sanctuary.
The trails will take through wooded areas, across the lake, through the marsh, and across the prairies. Take your time and keep your eyes and ear open. There is plenty of wildlife to see and hear
Review of Trails
We did an early spring hike and spent just over 2 hours on the trails and hiked about 3.4 miles. During our visit the Sycamore Trail was closed and under water.
All of the trails were fairly easy to hike and the trail signs were easy to follow. But many of the trails were washed out so you had to step over wood beam framework that was designed to hold the trail gravel in place.
The trails that cross over the pond are wooden bridges and in great shape. These bridges do get slippery if they are wet. So use caution when walking across the bridges.
Along the trails you will find places to take a break and take in the wildlife. We didn’t see much but that was because it was early in the season and it was early afternoon. The best time to see wildlife is during the early hours (this is the case for most nature trails.
If you plan to visit, make sure it hasn’t rained in a while. Trails may be closed or to muddy to use. To learn more about the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary or to contact them check out their website.
I took just over 100 pictures and many of them came out, but they aren’t worth sharing all of them. Below are just a handful of my favorites. To see more pictures of the Heard Museum Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary, check out my Flickr album. Current future visits will be added there.
About the Images
The images were shot mid afternoon and the pictures were shot from the hip using my Sony a6000 Camera and a Sony E 55-210mm F4.5-6.3 Lens. I then edited the images with Adobe Lightroom, Google Nik Collection to remove noise and clean up the images. For some images I may have used Topaz Labs to enhance the images.
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