Posts in Category: New Mexico
Cranes in Winter!
Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM
Well not quite winter…but definitely snow on the mountains this morning at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes. I stood on the Coyote deck for a half hour waiting for, and trying for, this shot. There was one spot of sun on the snowy mountains, and occasionally Sandhill Cranes moving up the refuge would pass in front of the spot. Photo in the making. 🙂
Nikon P900 at just under 1000mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Festival of the Cranes (posting schedule)
Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache NWR, Socorro NM.
Friends and followers. I am at the Festival of the Cranes, at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the next 6 days. One of the things about Bosque is that you want, as many days as possible, to be on the refuge at dawn. This is especially important when, like me, you are actually “working” the festival, and have most of your daylight hours already committed to “inside” activities. So, for the next week or so, my posting schedule for Pic for Today is going to be skewed. Most days my post will not arrive until late in the day…perhaps even evening. So we will kick it off with this special edition afternoon post.
Sandhill Cranes are not the Cranes the Festival was named for…back in the 80s the Sandhill flock at Bosque del Apache included several “fostered” Wooping Cranes. They all eventually died out, including the only offspring…a single hybrid Sandhill/Wooper. However, the festival remains…now as a continuing celebration of Bosque’s winter population of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese. Â It is, according to some authorities, the oldest birding festival in the US. It is a big deal in Socorro…filling every available hotel room most years…and fostering a range of local spin-offs including a craft fair, an art fair, and lots of community dinners offered by churches and civic organizations.
The Sandhills are majestic, prehistoric looking and sounding birds, beautiful feeding or in flight. This shot is with the Nikon P900 at about 950mm equivalent field of view. Sports Mode to catch the action.
So, watch for the Pic for Today posts later in the day for the next while. I promise it will be worth the wait.
Figures in the foreground
Carol and Anna, with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background.
A front was coming through Santa Fe yesterday. We got out in the morning to walk along the lower Santa Fe river along the bike path while the sun was still shining…though it was completely overcast by the time we got back to the car. This is my wife Carol and my daughter Anna, who is in grad-school in Santa Fe. We are on a bridge over the Santa Fe river channel. You can just see the snow caps on the Sangre de Cristos far back under the mountain effect clouds. They are expecting 2-4 inches of snow out of the storm today, so this landscape will look considerably different by tomorrow. 🙂
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at 24mm equivalent. I really enjoy the subtle HDR effect of the Sony, which makes landscape portraits like this very pleasing. Nominal exposure 1/1600th @ ISO 80 @ f3.5.
Handsome is as handsome does. Happy Sunday!
Gambel’s Quail, Sweetwater Wetlands, Tucson AZ
We spent the early morning yesterday at Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson AZ. Sweetwater Wetlands was one of the first municipal water treatment plants developed with native vegetation and trails specifically for birding. The size of its parking lot testifies to its popularity with Tucson area birders, and with visitors from around the world. In the winter it draws a wide variety of wetland species that would otherwise be hard to see in Tucson’s desert environment, and even in August there are birds aplenty.
This covey of 8-10 Gambel’s Quail were along the edge of one of the berm paths, feeding. I have attempted to photograph Gambel’s Quail in both New Mexico and Arizona, never with much success. They are easily spooked, hard to approach, and fast when they decide to disappear. At Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, even with a sheet of glass between you and the birds (at the feeder blinds in the Visitor Center), it is hard to get them to sit long enough for a portrait. This is the “guard” quail…generally a male…who has the job of standing watch while the rest of the covey feeds. For some reason, instead of leading his covey off into the brush when I came around the corner of the trail close to them, he took the challenge head on, and approached me…strutting his best…his head plume raised…ready to fight me if I insisted! Of course, his covey obediently followed a yard behind…so they all clattered down the edge of the path toward me. He repeatedly struck his best pose on the brow of the trail and dared me to do my worst. My worst was to take a lot of pictures 🙂 The light, behind him and still warm with rising sun, along with his attitude, made him irresistible.
Nikon P900 at about 1600mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
An encounter like this is always wonderful…in the literal sense of the word. It fills me with wonder…with a sense of the greatness of the creator God. And, of course, with an appreciation of God’s love in all creatures. How can I not feel blessed? It is way more than good luck. I can not believe there is not a loving intention behind an unlikely encounter like this, and it gives me great joy to share it with you. That is what the Generous Eye is all about. Happy Sunday!
Sandstone Bluffs Overlook on El Malpais
Sandstone Bluffs overlook at El Malpais National Monument, near Grants NM
It does not seem possible that my daughter Sarah and I experienced the many kinds of beauty we saw yesterday in just one day. We picked up a car at the Albuquerque Sunport at noon…after some negotiation, a nice little Kia Soul…and drove and down across New Mexico into Arizona. Along the way we drove through El Malpais National Monument which consists of amazing stand stone mesas and bluffs and one of the largest (and most recent) lava flow fields in North America. We stopped at La Ventana Natural Arch, then drove the rest of the length of the Malpais, and on out across a volcanic plateau (complete with cinder cones) clothed, in this wet summer, in so much green that it looked like the Yorkshire Downs more than New Mexico. On the plateau we were caught in amazing cloud burst thunderstorms with veils and faucets of rain, were stunned by vast expanses of sunflowers filling low spots and turning the foothills yellow, caught a rainbow, and then drove out across Arizona and down one side of the Salt River Canyon and up the other. Sunset found us on the west rim of the canyon. Amazing day.
This is early in the trip, at Sandstone Bluffs Overlook in El Malpais National Monument. That is Mount Taylor on the horizon to the right, one of the youngest volcanoes in the US, and author of the black lava flows you see to the left. The intricately carved edge of the sandstone mesas dominates the view.
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at 24mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom.
Cactus Garden
Native cactus, Arroyo Hondo Open Space, Santa Fe NM
My assignment for yesterday morning was to find somewhere to hike around Santa Fe. With the help of Google and the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe I found Arroyo Hondo Open Space. It is right at the east edge of the city, near the top of the first pass on 25 North. After some false starts due to my thinking I could find it without consulting the gps, we got there. There is a nice parking area (and even a portapody) and an extensive loop of trail through Pinion Juniper habitat with too many varieties of cactus to count. It must be glorious when in bloom. There were a few wildflowers still in bloom in August…and the views were amazing. They say on a clear day you can see Mt. Taylor, 90 miles to the west, and the views south and west over the Sandias are spectacular. On the other side of the hill you overlook Santa Fe, and the Santa Fe mountains rise to the North. All in all a great place to spend an afternoon (or morning…morning would be cooler in August 🙂
This little grouping of cacti and rocks looks like something a landscape gardener would have designed…and my compliments to the master gardener!
Sony HX90V in-camera HDR at 160mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
NM Sunflower! Happy Sunday.
Sunflower, just over the NM border from OK.
There is a substantial stone sign to mark the border crossing between Oklahoma and New Mexico on Route 56, and a more subtle shift in the landscape from high plains to volcanic plateau, but the real difference, at least this year, is sunflowers. Evidently New Mexico distributed tons of sunflower seeds this spring, and sprayed them along roadsides all over what I have seen of the state so far this trip. And it has been a wet (by NM standards) summer…with enough rain so that the sunflowers, watered by runoff from the roads, have prospered. Big, bold, beautiful sunflowers provide a foreground for the volcanic uplands and mountains of this section of New Mexico. It is great! It is wonderful. It is an act, intentional or otherwise, of worship and praise…guaranteed to lift the spirits of everyone who lives in, or visits the state.
We had to stop a few miles into New Mexico at a little roadside rest to take in the view, and I was compelled to photograph a few of sunflowers. The glancing, high altitude light of late morning, with in-camera HDR to keep the shadows and highlights in range, contribute to image that makes me smile…and I hope it does you too. It is just so cheerful. And yet it is authentic. This is not a pampered garden sunflower. You can see the wear and tear of life on the roadside all over the plant…and the great green hairy fist of the new bud adds a contrasting element and another dose of reality. This is cheerfulness in the face of adversity. This is a great big simile despite the challenges. This is praise for the good life even when that life is not easy. It says to me: God is great. God is good. And nothing life can throw at me will change my mind.
All that from a sunflower on the roadside? Certainly! Happy Sunday! And may it be a sunflower day for you!
Bandelier
Carol and Anna at Bandelier National Monumnet
My wife Carol and my daughter Anna posing at the largest of the cavates (improved rock caves used for living and storage) at Bandelier National Monument. The Ancestral Pueblo peoples lived in Frijoles Canyon for hundreds of years, growing beans and corn, and improving many of the small caves in the cliffs, then building along the base of the cliff, and finally building a free-standing 400 room circular complex on the floor of the canyon. It is possible that a combination of drought and the exhaustion of the firewood supply for a day’s travel in any direction forced them to resettle closer to the Rio Grande river…either to build or to join one the pueblos that still exist. At its height, the Ancestral Pueblo culture supported a substantial population, and maintained trade routes that brought in goods from deep into Mexico and Guatemala, and across the plains to eastern North America. The ruins are testimony to the people who became the Pueblos that remain.
Sony HX400V in-camera HDR. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Comma in New Mexico
Comma Butterfly, Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary, Santa Fe NM
I know, there is no comma in New Mexico, but I mentioned in the Mourning Cloak post a few days ago that we had also seen a Comma / Question Mark butterfly up Bear Canyon at the Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary, but I was not sure which one. The distinguishing feature is a small mark on the back of the wing, and it certainly takes some imagination even then (or it does for me). However, in researching a bit last week I found that you can reliably distinguish Comma form Question Mark from above. This is definitely a Comma. It has the heavily fringed wings and the correct pattern of dots and dashes on the fore-wing. I think, actually, that makes it my first Comma, and certainly an unexpected butterfly for canyon high above Santa Fe, New Mexico in March.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
The Land of Enchantment. Happy Sunday!
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks, NM
We are back in Maine, “The Pine Tree State”, from New Mexico, “The Land Of Enchantment.” On the whole I have to say that whoever came up with the New Mexico nickname did a better job of capturing the essence of the state than whoever came up with Maine’s. I mean, you can market “enchantment”…”pine trees” just does not have the same effect. Don’t get me wrong, Maine is home and I am happy to be home…but New Mexico was home for 12 years, and I can still appreciate the enchantment of the landscape, the culture, and the history. This is certainly an enchanted landscape from an enchanted place. We are back at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and here we see two of the three land forms that meet at the Monument. The eroded tuff cliffs in the foreground, and ancient volcanic mountains in the back. The third would be the open valley of the Rio Grande River which is out of the frame well to the left. And storm clouds…life-givers…moving in over all. Enchantment!
Sony WX220 at 25mm equivalent field of view. In-camera HDR. Nominal exposure: 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f8. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Of course, enchantment is a state of mind. All around you in New Mexico is the evidence of how fragile and wonderful life can be. For thousands of years…from pit dwellers to pueblos, to Navajo and Apache hunters, to the Spanish invaders, to the hunters turned shepherds and silversmiths, to the trading post merchants, cowboys, miners, farmers, and outlaws, to the atom chasers at Los Alamos and the artists of Santa Fe…humans have tried to make a life in this fantastic, wonderfully weathered, landscape…always poised on the edge…boom followed by bust…never quite waking from the dream. And the landscape weathers on, patient, ever changing and yet unchanged, rolling over and engulfing every change made by man. It is much the same everywhere, if you look behind the current facade, but some landscapes have almost been tamed. New Mexico, despite every effort of humanity, has not. The struggle and delicate balance…and the beauty of life on the edge…of the waking dream…is still very evident. Enchantment.
My spiritual forefathers lived in just such a landscape. The tribes of Israel herded sheep between the farming towns along the rivers. Jesus was born and lived his life among us in a place that shares this particular enchantment. For me, part of the magic of New Mexico is that I can feel something of the mindset that shaped the scriptures, that gave the words and images in which my spiritual reality was first expressed. Being there, in places like Tent Rocks, puts me into a spiritual perspective, and makes it easier to believe. This is good. Happy Sunday!