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.