Highlights of 2016

What are the experiences of 2016 I’ll remember the most?

The trip to New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes tops the list for memorable travel. My husband and I enjoyed it so much we’re already looking for similar events at National Wildlife Refuges elsewhere in the country.

My son-in-law defending his research and getting his PhD…finding a postdoc for 2017…tops the list for memorable family event. It’s quite a milestone. My daughter will have a similar one in 2017. This kind of milestone is a huge change for them --- no longer a student, physically moving somewhere very different, etc. --- and has the potential to be a pivot point in their lives. It’s on my list for memorable experiences because of the flurry of activity we’re involved in these last weeks of the year…and knowing that there is more to come in early 2017.

Of course – there are many other things I could put on the list – courses, volunteering, travels to familiar places. I chose these two because they were so different...they are not part of the ‘norm’ that we enjoy all the time!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – December 2016

I decided to choose the little celebrations I looked in December that were non-traditional. There were four groupings:

Classes

I thoroughly enjoyed a 2-day class on aquatic macroinvertebrates last week. It’s been almost two years since I too anything that was more than a few hours in duration….and a long time since I had been in a lab. I celebrated the subject matter and the experience that reminded me a lot of my undergraduate days.

There are two Coursera courses that I celebrated – linearly since I was not taking them concurrently: Osteoarcheology and Anatomy of the Abdomen and Pelvis. They are probably among the most challenging Coursera courses I’ve taken…but I’m so interested in the topics that I’m celebrating their availability and that I have the time to dedicate to them.

Food

I volunteered at the Howard County Conservancy’s Natural Holiday Sale and celebrated the huge variety of cookies to choose from. I like trying different kinds of cookies – never having enough time to try all the cookie recipes that ‘look good.’

I made the Paleo Chocolate Pudding (made with avocado!) and wow! I’ll make it again as part of our celebration at the beginning of 2017.

Backyard Birds

I heard an owl in the forest behind out house just before it was light enough to see it…and celebrated knowing it was there.

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard again. I celebrated that it did…and that it didn’t stick around long enough to scare away the birds that visit bird bath and feeder.

Out and About

The most Christmasy items on the list of little celebrations are a walk around Brookside Gardens’ holiday lights and the poinsettia display at Rawlings Observatory.

And I always celebrate seeing Bald Eagles at Conwingo. The birds – rare not so long ago – are back in large enough numbers that it’s possible to seem them often. Something to celebrate!

Conowingo - December 2016

Yesterday we spent the morning at Conowingo Fisherman’s Park. It was a sunny morning – Christmas – and the traffic was light. When we got there we immediately noticed that there were more gulls than we’d seen before and the water was churning from the dam.

It takes us about an hour to get to Conowingo from our house so we had not put on all our winter gear beforehand. I added ski bibs, a fleece jacket, a silky balaclava, and a hooded scarf before I put on my coat. Foot warmers were added to the bottom of my feet before I put on my hiking boots and I stuck hand warmers in my gloves. At the last minute, I decided to add the bands the legs of the ski bibs to shorten them a little since the pavement was slushy and wet. The temperature was in the 30s…a good but not severe test of the ‘cold weather’ garb. I stayed comfortably warm!  The silky balaclava is newest addition and I like it because it easily pulls up over my mouth…are higher over my nose; That would be great for colder or windier days. You can also see that we were not the only ones enjoying the birds at Conowingo on Christmas morning!

The Bald Eagles are the reason we go to Conwingo. My husband got the best pictures of the day of an eagle that had just caught a fish.

He also took a picture of one up in a tulip poplar tree that we noticed as we talked back to our car getting ready to leave.

I took some pictures that are past the optical zoom range of my camera…into the digital zoom.  There were almost always eagles on the abutment come out from the dam and I couldn’t resist trying to capture their interactions.  The one on the left is keeping a firm hold on his catch.

Is this one screaming at the gulls to go away?

And sometimes there is just a big tussle. There are at least three birds involved in this picture.

This eagle is surrounded by black vultures – although they all seem to be not making eye contact with each other.

There were groups of black vultures on the railing at the top of the dam…and there always seemed to be one or two that were spreading their wings.

I saw one cormorant in the water…and one flying low over the water.

The gulls were ring-billed gulls. They would dive down to catch a fish then (sometimes) bob downstream on the surface.

Now for some ‘can you find’ pictures. There is a great blue heron in each of the three pictures below (not flying).

Do you see the pigeons in the picture below?

And finally – do you see the two Bald Eagles?

Conowingo was a good outing for our Christmas morning!

Rawlings Conservatory – Part III

The poinsettias are the seasonal show at the Rawlings Conservatory this time of year….and they can be purchased too! They fill every nook and cranny of space in the entrance and the first room past….lining the permanent beds

And, this year, filling and surrounding a donkey cart.

There are pinks and reds and white and white/red combinations.

The one that looked most different to me this year was an off-white variety that has smaller flowers but lots of curly petals that almost covered the center.

I also looked for the green veined white leaves or petals – not sure which one they were.

I saved this ‘part’ to post about until last….since it was the most Christmasy….we’re getting closer every day.

Previous posts about the Rawlings Conservatory: Cactus Room, Tropical Room.

Rawlings Conservatory – Part II

I posted about the cactus room at the Rawlings Conservatory last week. Today it about the experience of the tropics room. It a warm moist place – perfect for a change of environment on a cold blustery winter day.

It’s not only the temperature and humidity that is different from the outdoors. It’s the colors of the foliage. Everything outside has faded to winter drabness here – while the tropical room is full of color – dominated by green. There were only a few things in bloom and I focused on them for my photography.

My favorite memory of the room was not about the place itself but a mother with a young child (probably 6-12 months old) in a stroller. I commented that her child really seemed to be enjoying the green – wide eyed and alert. What followed was a very pleasant conversation about how different life is when not constrained by a career based schedule. She had stopped working when her child was born and did not plan to return for a couple of years…and I retired. We’re both enjoying this time of our lives and the choices we’ve made to fill our days. The little girl in the stroller seemed to enjoy listening to us talk too!

The tropical room was the part of the Rawlings Conservatory that reminded me the most of the Brookside Conservatory. It has similar plants (like the Bird-of-Paradise below). One difference: the water feature at the Rawlings Conservatory has a water feature that is deep enough that it is stocked with goldfish and there is a dispenser where you can purchase fish food.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 17, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Ceiling panel cools regardless of climate – I like to read stories about ‘out of the box’ solutions…although I wonder how many of them will prove feasible in the end.

Big Pharma and Distracted Driving are Killing Americans Early – Life expectancy in the US declined in 2015. It’s the first time in 23 years. It’s not a big drop but there is worry that it begins a downward trend. Deaths due to motor vehicle accidents have gone up by 6%. Accidental poisonings increased by 13% with 95% of that from drug overdoses and alcohol. There is related story – from another source: American Death Rate from Drugs, Alcohol, and Mental Disorders Nearly Triples since 1980.

Toward Treating Alzheimer’s Disease with Brain Waves – Another ‘out of the box’ solution…inducing gamma (brain) waves using optogenetics…exposure to flickering light.

“Neural Tourniquet” Zaps a Nerve to Stop Bleeding Anywhere in the Body – An example of bioelectronic medicine…that’s been researched for 15 years.

World Map Reveals What Each Country Does Better than Any Other – I’m not sure how useful this work is…how the ‘best’ about a country was determined. But it is interested to look at ti for a few minutes. The US is best at ‘spam emails’ --- not a positive thing.

Museum in Japan has a collection of 1,700 rocks that look like human faces – I remember ‘seeing’ faces in the patterns of wood veneer…why not rocks too. Some of them look more face-like than others to me.

The appalling reality of Bosnia’s missing dead – Mass graves from 25 years ago – a sad reminder of tragedy that is hard to unravel from what remains.

Reach Out Reporter – Science News for Children – Free Technology for Teachers post and actual site – There is ‘Fact Pack’ about the December Solstice that links to this time of year…I like the video about starling murmurations! The site is designed for teachers…but is useful for anyone interacting with children on science related topics.

A few new maps in National Park Maps – A great site to check before you head out to any of the national parks!

10 Intentional Deformed Skulls from Around the World – I’m taking a Osteoarcheology course on Coursera right now and am reading the articles other students are referencing. Expect more items on the gleanings for next week too.

Rawlings Conservatory – Part I

Earlier this week, my husband and I made the trek from our house up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Baltimore. We had seen it in passing 15-20 years ago when we were making trips to the Baltimore Zoo when our daughter was young – but we had never stopped and gone inside. It’s not as big as the Longwood Conservatives and is probably about a 100 years older than the Brookside Gardens Conservatories. It was a morning well spent. This post is about the desert room of the Conservatory and will be followed (eventually) by two more posts about the tropical room and the poinsettias.

There was an aloe in bloom. The color attracted my attention at first.

When I zoomed in for a closer look – the coloring became even more distinctive.

Periodically some rocks with rusty swirls were positioned among the cactus…adding other colors to the room. It reminded me of looking down on the terrain of some of the western US from an airplane window.

There was a tiny clump of cactus with seed pods about 1/4 inch across nestled in the spines. There were two elderly women that spotted them and made sure I saw them.

And then I continued my project photographing cactus spines. There were some different types than I had photographed before.

• Where the spines are along the edge of the pad like stem
• Where there are ‘leaves’ growing between the spines
• Pink pines on one, yellow spines on another, and white spines
• Different colors of spines (does it have something to do with the age of the spine?)

They all look so different from other plants...fodder for science fiction writers imaging aliens.

Spines and Thorns and Prickles

The conservatories at Brookside Gardens held more than model trains when I went last week. I was drawn to the cactus and took some macro shots of spines – like the ones I took at Bosque del Apache.

The Castor-Bean Begonia (Begonia ricinifolia) and prompted me to research differences between spines and thorns. I checked the Wikipedia article on the topic.  I discovered there are prickles and other semantics. Did you know that roses have prickles – not thorns? True thorns are modified branches or stems…so these red things on the Caster-Bean Magnolia are probably not thorns. But are they prickles? Maybe. The larger ones seem to be split into hair-like structures but the smaller one are barbs. I didn’t touch the plant to find out how sharp they were!

Brookside Gardens’ Model Trains

Every year there is a train exhibit in one of the conservatories during Brookside Gardens’ Garden of Lights. When we went to see the lights last week, I decided to come back during the day to photograph the trains because the light would be better. Last Friday was the day. It was a sunny day – which met my criteria for the light – but I was dismayed to find the entrance crammed with three school buses! I turned around to park in the Brookside Nature Center parking area. I was worried that it would be too crowded to enjoy the trains…but it worked out. There were a lot of children (early elementary…and some pre-school), but it was fun watching them try to find the superheroes and villains…monsters…Santa…magical creatures…Disney characters --- in add places along the train tracks. For some it was hard not to just watch the trains. One of the trains even had a smokestack!

I found myself taking more pictures of the scenes along the tracks rather than the trains. Enjoy the slide show – the best pictures I managed to get with the crowds of very excited children in the conservatory.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 10, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

10 Delectable Desserts Made with Vegetables – Yum! Ideas for the holiday cooking.

The Painful Truth About America’s Opioid Addiction – OxyContin (prescribed for many kinds of pain and initially thought to not be addictive) and inexpensive Heroin…a sad story. Awareness of the issue is increasing but, so far, we don’t seem to be making progress toward reducing the problem.

Wanderlust-Inducing Images Capture Majestic Views of Iceland – Eye candy….a beautiful place. Photographer Lukas Furlan.

Animal Microbiomes are Unique and Beneficial – Each host animal may have it’s own microbiome --- important to efficiency of food digestions and survival!

Why are caves the best place to train astronauts – About a training program initiative of the European Space Agency.

Deer Advisor: Help for Communities Grappling with Abundant Deer Populations – Our area of Maryland has an overabundance of deer. They are hungry enough to eat even vegetation that are not their favorite foods – like tough evergreens.

The search for the weird stuff that makes up the Universe – A short video featuring Astrophysicist Katherine Freese…about Dark Matter.

Flowers you can eat – Beautiful and flavorful….I’m not sure that I would prefer just looking at them.

Sea Ice Hit Record Lows in November – Record lows for ice in November – both Arctic and Antarctic.

HabiChat Fall/Winter 2016 – An online newsletter from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for stewards of Maryland’s backyard wildlife. There probably are lots of states that have similar information as part of their outreach efforts.

New Mexico Finale

On our last full day in New Mexico, we got to the Crane Ponds at Bosque del Apache for our last fly out. The sunrise was brilliantly red and pink looking toward the east

And the colors were only a little muted reflected of the clouds in the west.

It seemed like there were not as many birds on the ponds – although the ducks seemed to be very active with their morning feeding.

The sun came up and I got a last picture of some Sandhill Cranes in the golden sunshine.

We went back to the hotel for breakfast and packing the car to head back to Albuquerque. After lunch, we walked around Petroglyph Nation Monument. We did the three short trails at Boca Negra Canyon. There were petroglyphs of spirals,

And birds (one looks like a duck to me…the other a macaw).

The signage and a book on petroglyphs said that the human figure with the lines flowing downward between the legs is a ‘transition to death’ symbol. I wondered how the ancient peoples depicted birth.

At the highest point on the Boca Negra Canyon trails – there is a view of a Albuquerque housing development! The architecture is quite different from what we see in Maryland.

There were some ruins (low walls) on the highest point as well. Someone had made a cairn in one of the 'rooms'. The stones are volcanic.

The saltbush along the trail was full of seeds.

We drove to the Volcanoes area on the other side of the monument and hiked to an overlook of the Rio Grande Rift Valley – that included a view of downtown Albuquerque.

It was a good way to finish our New Mexico vacation. We headed to our hotel and woke up early the next morning for our flight. The weather surprised us: a gentle rain on the way to the airport.

Desert Arboretum at Bosque del Apache

I spent some time in the Desert Arboretum at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our last full day at the Festival of the Cranes. Almost immediately I spotted a dragonfly that wasn’t sitting still but would pause long enough to be photographed. I was glad to have the extra power of the digital zoom on my new camera.

I also spotted some white-crowned sparrows which I had been told about on one of our tours…but hadn’t seen. They nest in the far north and are only in the US during the winter. They have very distinctive black and white stripes on their heads.

Rather than take pictures of whole cactus plants, I decided to look more closely at the spines. At first, I looked for color.

Then I looked more closely about how the spines were attached to the fleshy part of the cactus. I did a series that zoomed in more and more and discovered that the spines almost look like they pierce the flesh rather than grow out of it!

The image below are some prickly pear spines.

Some spines look sharper than others…or maybe it is the golden color of the spines that make them look more menacing. Again – there is a grayish mass (like a blob of putty) where they go into the cactus flesh.

Enough about spines. There was a gall on one of the plants that reminded me a little of the cedar apple rust gall I’d seen at Mt. Pleasant Farm last spring (described in this post).

The only bloom I saw was a tiny plant that looked like the top had been eaten.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the yucca pods. Yucca pods have always been one of my favorite seed pods. There are some I harvested about 40 years ago in a dried arrangement at my house!

Elephant Butte Lake State Park

On the Friday morning of our trip to New Mexico, our tour was on a houseboat at Elephant Butte State Park. We were glad that the high winds from the day before had died down – although once we were out on the lake the breeze made for a cold time photographing birds! The movement of the boat also presented a challenge too. We saw Western Grebes near the dock and out on the lake; the picture below is near the dock.

The picture below is of a Clark’s Grebe (there is white in front of the eye and the bill is brighter yellow). Note that the water is a lot rougher in this picture….it was out on the lake.

There were American coots near the dock as well and some were close enough to photograph while the morning sun was still coloring the water.

Brewer’s Blackbirds frequented the dock area too. This male posed on gate – making it easy to photography him calling and staring at me!

American White Pelicans were out and about on the lake. They were very far away so I was using the zoom on my camera to photography them.

After I got back to hotel and looked at my pictures on a larger screen, I noticed one of the ‘pelican pictures’ had cormorants in it!

There were cormorants on one of the mounds of tires used as breakwaters around the docks. Note the Clark’s Grebe in the picture too.

After returning to the dock and having lunch, we headed out to the park below the dam. Evidently the area is usually teaming the birds but all we saw the day we were there was a male Pyrrhuloxia – and I was frustrated that this was the best picture I could get. He definitely was not posing for us.

It was a good day trip – and very different from our experience at Bosque del Apache.

The VLA at Night

Two weeks ago today, my husband went back to the Very Large Array for an evening of photography (see earlier post here for out tour of the VLA during the day). The class was double the usual size because one of the previous nights had been cloudy – i.e. the whole point was to get stars in the photograph and that couldn’t happen on a cloudy evening. They had a short lecture to explain the process and then headed out to position themselves around the same radio telescope that we saw during the day.

They took pictures with 30 second exposures so that the stars were still points of light rather than trails…and the dish was ‘light painted’ during that time so it would be clearly visible in the pictures.

The sky is very dark in that part of New Mexico and the Milky Way looked more like I remember it as a child. My husband was pleased with most of the pictures he got and he picked his favorite for me to include with this post.

If we go to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache again, he’ll take the advanced version of the course!

Third Day at Bosque del Apache

High winds were forecast for our third day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge Festival of the Cranes. We had signed up for the ‘Walk Out to Fly Out’ bus so we were up at 4 AM again and at the refuge shortly after 5. The bus left at 5:30. It took us to a parking area on the wildlife loop and then we walked back into a managed wetland on dikes…not normally open for hiking. Everything was quiet when we first got there and we realized that we’d be facing the sunrise rather than having it at our backs like it was at the Crane Ponds.

Something (a coyote?) startled the snow geese and many of them flew up prior to sunrise. I liked this picture of their silhouettes and the curly clouds from the winds – high aloft and at ground level.

Some cranes flew over a little later. Note how different they look from the snow geese and how the feathers at the tips of their wings splay.

Somehow the bird in the center of this picture reminds me of how primitive birds are depicted. Cranes have a long lineage…and they are big. They may have more in common with early birds like robins and chickadees.

What not to like about cranes backlit by flaming colors of sunrise!

We drove around the wildlife loop after our tour wondering how the brisk winds would impact the cranes. There were some feeding in the fields. The light was right to see a lot of feather definition in these birds (click on the image below and see a larger version).

We saw mallards in one of the canals. I chose the best picture I got of the male – with the glossy green head.

And then we went back to the hotel for naps since the wind was brutal and we knew we were going to have a later evening because we’d signed up for an Owling Expedition.

When we returned to the refuge in mid-afternoon, we discovered that the location of our lecture and dinner had been moved from the Expo Tent to a Refuge building. The tent had been closed because of the wind! It had calmed down a little by that time and we hoped it would stay calm for our evening outdoors. After an interesting lecture and a hearty dinner buffet, we headed out to 4 vans. We were looking for three types of owls: western screech, great horned, and barn. The one we saw most clearly was a Western Screech Owl. My husband got this picture! I was used to seeing the red morph of the Eastern Screech Owl (Belle, the owl at the Howard County Conservancy’s Belmont Nature Center) so I was surprised at the coloring being most grays and browns.

We saw the great horned owl in a tree top – just before it flew onward.

The Barn Owl we heard…but didn’t see.  The wind had picked up again and we declared ‘success’…headed back to the Visitors Center.

Ten days of Little Celebrations – November 2016

So many little celebrations – it was hard to choose just 10!

There is always a lot of good food in November:

Thanksgiving was celebrated with our tradition of brisket cooked in the crock pot…but I enjoyed two new sides even more: a slaw made with Napa Cabbage, beet noodles and crystalized ginger (homemade cranberry relish and olive oil dressing) and butternut squash mousse (following the recipe for pumpkin mousse found here – sort of…I substituted unsweetened coconut for the banana).

Graham crackers have become my ‘comfort food’ for my afternoon snack or in the evening. I like the ‘originals’ the best and celebrate that they are still available!

Pomegranates are in season. They are so beautiful and their season meshes very well with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have become part of my tradition in those big celebrations.

Being home again after travelling was worth celebrating too:

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard after we returned from New Mexico and I managed to get a picture when the bird sat for a bit in our tulip poplar tree. I celebrated my new camera’s ability to get the picture…and that the bird was around. But I don’t want it to stay around all the time because I like the little birds that come to the bird bath and the feeder!

The Modern World, Part Two is the Coursera course I am viewing this month. I’d taken Part I way back in 2013! I celebrated when I found this one in the Coursera catalog because I’ve always thought my basic knowledge of history since 1900s was patchy.

The trip to New Mexico had so many celebrations…but I managed to pick just 5:

Birds that I had not seen (or maybe had not noticed) before worth celebration: Grebes and Brewers Blackbirds and Pyrrhuloxia to name a few. I should count each new (to me) bird is a little celebration all by itself!

Sandhill Cranes silhouetted by the sunrise…the image, the luck to catch it, just being at Bosque del Apache.

Wild Turkeys in action. Turkey being stately is one think…turkey running down the road to catch up with their cohort…I celebrated their quick analysis of their situation and seeing them move in hurry!

Macro Photography of Cactus. I haven’t gotten around to posting the pictures yet…but I celebrated how well my camera worked in the small botanical garden at Bosque del Apache.

Petroglyph National Monument. I had read a book before I left for New Mexico about petroglyphs in the southwest and celebrated being the place (near Albuquerque) to see some. They’ll be a topic of an upcoming post as well.

The Very Large Array (VLA)

On our second afternoon in New Mexico we drove out to the Very Large Array (radio astronomy observatory). It is located about 50 miles west of Socorro, NM where our hotel was located. It took us a little over a hour to drive there from the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge where we had been in the morning (see yesterday’s post about the morning’s activities). It was a scenic drive through the Magdalena Mountains. We had opted to make the trek when we did because the forecast for the next day was for high winds.

As we drove into the parking lot – there was a sign telling us to turn off any cell phones or electronic devices. The first picture I took was of a tile in the bathroom --- a stylized image of a radio telescope disk.

The VLA is made of 27 25-meter radio telescopes in a Y-shaped array. They radio telescopes can be moved along a Y shaped track. They were not in the tightest configuration while we were there so it was hard to get more than one at a time in a picture. During our tour, the telescopes were running a maintenance protocol and the dishes moved.

I was surprised how some of the equipment was in boxes on landing under the dish!

A few days later, my husband went back to the VLA at night and got some excellent pictures of the stars with a radio telescope in the foreground. I’ll post about that some other time.

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.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 26, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Unlock a New Way of Seeing the World as a Master Naturalist – I became a Master Naturalist in Maryland a few years ago and enjoyed the process and the aftermath of activities. This article was written by someone in training to be a Master Naturalist in Oregon. She is having a similar experience. The honing of the training by each state translates the broader textbooks to a local level – things that are where we live.

Can you Trust Calorie Counts? – Evidently calorie counts on food labels or on display in restaurants are not monitored…it is an honor system…and they are chronically low! Yet another reason to prepare and it mostly whole foods.

Well-Being at Work – An infographic about the components of an ideal day….inserting physical activity throughout a work day.

Paleo chocolate pudding – This looks yummy – and easy to make – with an avocado, cocoa powder, honey, and vanilla. I’m going to try it as soon as we finish off the butternut squash mousse I made for Thanksgiving.

A Better Treatment for Insomnia – Cognitive Based Therapy for Insomnia can be delivered in several ways….and has been endorsed by the American College of Physicians for initial treatment of chronic insomnia. This article has good links to find out more about it.

Colds: 14 Expert Answers on Prevention, Relief, and More – It’s the time of year that colds become more prevalent. My husband and I are pleased that we got to and from New Mexico without getting a cold. We used hand sanitizers….and were not sitting near anyone that was obviously sick!

Dementia on the downside, especially among people with more education, study finds – A positive trend!

Owls: A Guide to Every Species in the World – We enjoyed the owl lecture and field trip at Bosque del Apache…so I was glad to see this post from National Geographic when I got home.

Searching for Whoopers: New Report Showcases Gulf of Mexico Migrants – Maybe we’ll go to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge next fall…I’d like to see whooping cranes!

Photography in the National Parks: Focus on the Eyes, Focus on the Light – Two areas to think about during photo shoots. I always count a bird photo as ‘good’ if the eye is in focus!

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!