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In early December I returned to Bosque del Apache, a National Wildlife Refuge located about an hour South of Albuquerque, NM.  Established in 1939 to provide a critical stopover for  migrating waterfowl, Bosque is home to thousands of Sand Hill Cranes (as many as 14,000 during the winter months) and Snow Geese (up to 32,000) ... and is thus an attraction to virtually every wildlife photographer. 

It consists of 57,000 acres managed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and situated between two mountain ranges near a wild stretch of the Rio Grande.  It is one of 500 little known refuges in North America created to provide habitat and protection for migratory birds and endangered species.

This was my fifth time photographing Bosque during the last 12 years.  It is an amazing place that provided a different view each time I've visited.  The focus, of course, is on the birds but this trip I spent time working on landscape images of the refuge too. 

The center (figuratively not physically) of the refuge is a large lake surrounded by two loop roads.  You can see part of the lake in the first image. This lake/large pond was the night-time roosting spot for most of the 20,000 to 30,000 geese who used Bosque during the winter.  Each night, the birds would fly in and each morning they would leave ... often in a rather amazing fashion ... all of the geese would "blast off" during a 5 minute period!  Ii was an incredibly spectacular sight that I will never forget.  Now, that has changed and there are no longer any birds using this as their roosting spot.

In the background you can see the start of the mountain range that lies to the West of the Bosque, and a small gathering of geese located at the end. The next image is taken looking eastward at that end of the lake/pond.  The focus was those two trees and the strong reflection they created but you can also see the mountain range that borders on the eastern edge of the Refuge.

Much of the property is farm land that is planted with corn.  The corn is not harvested, though, but knocked down in the winter to provide feed for the birds.

Farming requires water.  Fortunately, the Rio Grande is nearby and canals have been created to move water from it to the Refuge. This shot has become my favorite landscape image ever from Bosque:

Another favorite from this trip was captured a little later in the day of a different set of the farm fields along with the mountain range to the West:

At one point, while cruising one of the loop roads, I spotted this field.  I don't know what one calls the grass clumps ... I call them pillows:

Just outside the "official" entrance to the Refuge are the Crane Pools. The two pools are the over-night roosting spots for the Cranes. This year they also became the resting spot for many of the Snow Geese.  It became the place from which to photograph the birds ... both in the early morning and at sunset as the birds began to arrive from their feeding locations to spend the night.  

One evening we had this very interesting mushroom cloud formation  ... btw, the atomic bomb was developed and tested nearby:

The "beauty" of Bosque del Apache, like many western scenes, is a quiet one that I've learned to appreciate more and more over the years I've visited it.  Most of the images you will see in the next few blog posting were been taken in these settings.  

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of a very cool place that few people know about and fewer still visit to see one of the most interesting congregation of wildlife in the U.S.A.

Bye for now,

Adam

P.S.  Here are two images from a previous visit.  The first is a personal favorite and is hanging on my wall.  It was taken with a large telephoto of a blast-off of thousands of birds and the second is a blur image of a blast-off taken with a wide angle.