Thursday, November 27, 2008

cranes and geese and sunrises oh my on 11-24-08

It’s our annual migration to Santa Fe, NM to spend thanksgiving with Murray and Rupama. This year we included a visit to Bosque del Apache which is about 90 miles south of Albuquerque. We arrived Monday, Nov. 24 about an hour before sunset, just in time to find a spot on the landing platform looking out at the water area. It looked like nothing was happening, a couple ducks off in the distance and a bald eagle in an old tree stump. Then suddenly we heard the clamor of cranes squawking off in the distance. Almost immediately the sky was full of birds flying overhead and landing in front of us. They just kept coming and coming, continuing like that for about two hours until after sunset. It was thrilling, exciting, magical, overwhelming. All I could do was stand there and stare and say "oh my gawd" over and over. My eyes filled with tears and they just kept coming. Sandhill cranes, Canadian geese, white snow geese. Thousands and thousands. Once they landed they started floating around in the water. Flocks of geese moved from the left to the right, flocks of cranes moved from right to left. I've never experienced anything like this.
We went back the next morning, arriving about 5:15am. It was cold and dark and almost no cars. I got out to look at all the birds floating around in the water gurgling and clacking. I saw a long slow-moving line of headlights off in the distance as birders began to arrive. By 6am many of the geese were stretching their wings, revving up their engines and getting ready to leave. All of a sudden, about 6:15am, all the geese lifted off and away they went overhead. The sunrise was spectacular and I lack the words to describe the feeling of thousands of geese flying overhead. Not much later the cranes began to leave and by 6:45am the water was almost empty of birds.
Holy cow, what an experience. I hope you enjoy the pictures. the top one is geese flying off at sunrise. the middle picture is sandhill cranes after flying in at sunset, the botton picture is during sunrise when the geese flew off.