Bosque del Apache

I took a couple of days and went to visit my sister in Springerville, AZ. I left Rio Rancho and drove to Socorro, NM and then a half hour south to the village of San Antonio, NM where I turned off on another road to go to the Bosque del Apache Bird Refuge. I have been there several times over the years but it had been about 15 years since I was last there. It is a wonderful place where you can see just about any bird that can be found in New Mexico there most of the year. In the winter the place is home to lots of migratory birds, especially the Sandhill Crane and Snow Geese, as well as Canadian Geese and about a dozen kinds of ducks. Or they usually are. I was disappointed to not see the thousands of cranes and geese I had remembered seeing the times I had been there before. I did see more deer than I remembered seeing before as well as lots of Redtailed Hawks and Cooper's Hawks and 3 Bald Eagles. This refuge was started in 1939. The Festival of the Cranes is held every November when the Cranes come back with lots of special people to talk about birds and other things at the refuge. There are lots of other animals here, too, like deer, coyotes, bobcats, rabbits, javalena (a type of wild pig native to the Americas) There are many different kinds of lizards and snakes, too. There is a large visitors center and gift shop.

Canadian Geese

Redtailed Hawk

Bird viewing deck

Redtailed Hawk

Pair of Bald Eagles in the tree. A bit hard to see in this photo.

Bald Eagle using my zoom lens

A different Bald Eagle sitting on dead tree that I remember having been in this pond for at least 30 years.

Mule Deer

Sandhill Cranes

Canadian Geese

A pair of Mute Swans were grazing in a pasture outside of the Refuge near a private home.

Old train depot, I think, as it was by the tracks in San Antonio, NM

Old church in San Antonio, NM that is no longer in use. There was a fence around it so couldn't get close. Couldn't find out any history on it.

Hawks and Quail

We get lots of birds on our little patch of desert land. I'm sure there were lots of birds here before there were houses and people but I couldn't help but encourage them to come back after we moved in. As pre my last post we do have hummingbirds. As these pics show we also have lots of hawks that come through. We get a lot of hawks when they are migrating through. This young Cooper's hawk flew in one afternoon and let me come right under our willow tree, where it was resting. I took several of it in the tree, then a couple of it when it flew over on part of the horse pen. The next morning, when I was feeding the horses, the hawk and another one like it flew over my head and circled over some nearby vacant lots for a few minutes, I assume they were looking for rats or rabbits but didn't find any. A week or so later a hawk that looked the same flew into the willow tree again and then dived into the big pear tree near my front door. Seconds later it came out with a sparrow clutched in one foot. That tree is where all the sparrows have 2 very large community nests and they roust there at nigh. With one of the sparrows taken by the hawk they were upset and noisy all day. Can't blame them, but the hawk has to eat, too. I have seen lots of Red-tailed hawks here as well, and one something that looked more like a falcon. We have some of the small sparrow hawks that seem to stay here year round. We gave several kinds of owls in our neighborhood but of course they are hard to get pictures of since they are usually only out at night. There are a couple of great horned owls that we hear a lot in the late winter and early spring when they are mating. There are some barn owls and the cute little borrowing owls but I haven't seen any of them lately.

 One of our resident mockingbirds sat by the rain gage the other day as if he were checking it out and disgusted that we have had so little rain right here even with other parts of the state getting more.

 A young scaled quail getting a drink.

This has been the first time we have had Gamble's quail or California quail show up. These 2 have hung around all summer. Normally we only get the scaled quail as shown in the rest of the photos of the quail. The scaled quail don't have the little topknots on their heads and aren't quite as large. Glad to see the Gamble's but wonder were they came from as I have only seen them in the southern part of the state and west into Arizona and California before.