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.

Centennial Park in Winter

I posted yesterday about the Canadian Geese at Centennial Park. There were other things to see as well. There were gulls on the ice and swooping down for fish in the open water part of the lake. Feathers littered the edge of the ice. This Ring-billed Gull (juvenile) was close enough and stood still long enough for a portrait.

There are quite a few crows around too….cawing attention to the themselves!

There was a tree that had had a large branch cut – probably last fall. It was one of the more colorful natural elements on this winter day. The asymmetry of the cracks caught my attention as well.

This is an example of a not-so-good picture being good enough to identify the birds: a female and male Bufflehead. They are small ducks that winter in our area. There were at least 3 of them feeding in the lake while I was there but they were clearly at the limit of my handheld ‘zoom’ capability.

The mallard ducks were closer. The male was swimming along the edge of the ice (notice the feathers on the edge of the ice)

And the female was a little further into the lake. The pair meandered through the Canadian Geese without harassment.

I took a few ‘intimate landscape pictures: the rocks near the boat launch with a remnant of snow and last season’s plants gone to seed,

The empty nests of Birds Nest Fungus in the same location I photographed them last spring full of ‘eggs,’

And a collection of hardy plants encircled by roots of a tree holding the soil above the level of the path.

It was a warm afternoon for winter…but still cold. And we probably are not done with winter yet. None of the deciduous trees around the lake looked ready for spring and the ice on the lake shows bright white in the background.