Second Morning at Bosque del Apache

We signed up for and early morning ‘Bosque del Apache Hot Spots and Elusive Birds’ tour that started at 5:30 AM on our second morning at the Festival of the Cranes. That meant me had to leave our hotel before 5…and it was cold. The tour participates and our guide climbed on the bus and were at Crane Ponds before 6 – well before dawn. The goal was to see the sandhill cranes and snow geese ‘fly out’ of their roosting area (in the water) to feeding areas in the fields in and around the refuge during the day. The action took place in less than an hour. The slide show below includes the time ordered images – once it got light enough for my camera to work reasonably well.

There was almost no wind so the reflections were good. I photographed a cottonwood tree repeatedly. The two pictures below are about 25 minutes apart…the pinks before dawn and the yellow light after.

There were other birds on the ponds too. The two pictures below are a female and male Northern Shoveler. The female is peeking out from behind pond vegetation…in the orangey reflections after sunrise. By the time I photographed the male about 30 minutes later, the magic of morning light was gone.

There were Canadian Geese on the ponds too – a familiar bird to us and not as numerous as at Bosque as where we live in Maryland.

A last picture at the ponds before we headed back to the Visitor Center for breakfast: the mountains reflected in the Crane Pond. If you look toward the top of the image, you’ll see the moon peeking out from behind a cloud.

After warming up while we ate breakfast, it was back on the bus. The Great Blue Heron we saw in one of the irrigation canals is so consistently present that the refuge staff has informally named him: Hank. The herons are not as prevalent at Bosque del Apache as we’ve seen in places like Conowingo Dam in Maryland…but another familiar bird to us.

Another familiar bird was surprise for me: an Eastern Bluebird. Evidently there are both eastern and western bluebirds on the refuge but the Eastern ones are more common in November…and this one looks more like an Eastern Bluebird to me!

And I got a picture of the legs on the Yellowlegs in one of the ponds.

There was a red-tailed hawk in one of the snags. It is a little too far away to be a ‘good’ picture but the distinctive patter on the breast make it good enough for identification.

There was a coyote watching Sandhill Cranes feeding. The predator was keeping its distance from the big birds.

I couldn’t resist some more zoomed shots of cranes. The red color on their head is such a vivid mark.

Our guided tour took us down a refuge road that is not part of the wildlife loop; the road was called ‘turkey road’ and we did see turkeys! They were come out of a path onto the road. As soon as they noticed the group of people taking pictures – they ran in the opposite direction! The turkey further back in line ran the hardest when they got out on the road and realized their ‘friends’ were so far away.

Then we turned around and saw another group of turkeys behind the bus. We must have seen about 50 birds just from that one vantage point.

It was quite a morning. We had excellent barbeque sandwiches from a food truck for lunch then headed out to our afternoon adventure...that’s the topic for tomorrow post.

First Day at Bosque del Apache

We made a leisurely tour of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our first day (November 13) – not trying to get there in time for the fly out which happens at sunrise. We’d arrived at our hotel after dark the day before and took in the scene of the Magdalena Mountains to the west – and the moon -  from our hotel parking lot as we got ready to go to the refuge for the first time.

After a quick stop at the refuge’s visitor center, we drove around the wildlife loop. There were flooded fields and one of the first birds I saw was a yellowlegs – a bird I’d also seen on the west coast.

Cattails were also prevalent.

There were lots of crows that moved around together as we took a short hike.

A train came through.

I was so focused on photographing the train that I was startled by two javelinas coming toward me! After they crossed the path, I managed to get a picture of them as they continued to move away.

We saw sandhill cranes feeding in the field. The sometimes raise their necks and heads straight up and make lots of noise…and they ‘dance’ too.

I was close enough to zoom in to get a picture of vegetation through the nostrils of a sandhill crane (nostrils are on the upper part of the bill)!

There were many Northern Pintail Ducks on the ponds

And American Coots

And Northern Shovelers (male and female)

And Buffleheads which are notoriously hard to photograph because they go under the water so frequently

And turkeys

And two morphs of snow geese (white and blue, they are distinguished from the Ross’s goose by the dark mark on their bill).

The cottonwoods were still full of yellow leaves since the weather had been mild until the later part of the week we were there.

It was a lot to see in one day!

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge

The third refuge on our trek was Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. It was a gray day --- but at least the rain happened while we were driving to the refuge than while we were there. One of our nav systems took us to a road through ponds but not to the visitor’s center. It was part of the refuge and we saw some Great Blue Herons

And Yellow Legs – very active in catching fish in the shallows.

Fortunately, we had another nav system that did chart a path to the visitor center and we did some hiking. Again – there was construction on one of the trails near the visitor and it was noisy enough that most of the wildlife has found someplace else to be for the day. On our hike I found a number of shelf-fungus. None of them were very large.

But one was a brilliant green color.

I tried to photograph them several from the top

And bottom.

The biggest one was growing on a stump near a boardwalk

And the gills underneath were more colorful than the top.

We headed out of the refuge and on toward Chincoteague….the topic of tomorrow’s post.