This was our day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, a refuge for so many wintering ducks, geese, and cranes. For a number of years, I had been seeing social media posts about this refuge and so it was on my list of places to visit. So after breakfast at the hotel which had these great coffee machines, we headed out to the refuge. We saw quite a few amazing birds. What was most unexpected though was the mountain scenery in the background that created this breathtaking backdrop for our day.
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| Northern Pintail |
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| Northern Pintails |
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| Sandhill Cranes |
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| Canada Geese in front with Sandhill Cranes in the background |
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| Northern Shovelers - in pairs or small groups, they would stir up the water to help in finding food |
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| Snow Goose |
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| Northern Pintails (male and female) |
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| Red-winged Blackbird |
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| White-crowned Sparrow |
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| American Coot |
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| Mostly Mallards although I do see a Northern Pintail or two in there |
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| Sandhill Crane with a variety of ducks |
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| Sandhill Crane |
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| Sandhill Crane |
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| Northern Harrier |
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| Bewick's Wren |
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| Bewick's Wren |
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| American Wigeon |
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| American Wigeon |
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| American Wigeons (front two) and I think Northern Pintails |
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| Western Meadowlark |
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| Western Meadowlark |
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| Snow Goose |
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| Northern Shoveler with Snow Geese in the background |
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| Snow Geese |
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| Northern Shoveler |
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| Snow Goose |
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| Northern Shoveler |
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| Northern Shoveler |
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| Snow Geese taking off - what a racket they made! |
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| American Coots maybe? |
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| Northern Flicker (red-shafted variant common in the west, the Northern Flickers I see in my home state of Alabama have a yellow shaft - the underside of their tail) |
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| Northern Flickers often are on the ground because they mostly eat ants. They don't have a hard beak to peck like other woodpeckers. |
While we were exploring the refuge, we learned about a three hour naturalist led tour that takes you in areas of the refuge that are not otherwise accessible to the public so we called the Visitor's Center and signed up for the afternoon tour. We spent the afternoon in a large van with a group of about eight visitor's looking for more birds and learning about their habitat. Although, it was hard to get photos out of the van, it was a really good tour.
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| American Kestrel that we got to watch kiting |
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| Greater Roadrunner |
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| Red-tailed Hawk |
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| Female Gambel's Quail |
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| Male Gambel's Quail |
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| Male Gambel's Quail acting as sentinel for a flock of Quail's on the ground |
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| Mule Deer |
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| Mule Deer |
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| Wild Turkeys |
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| Wild Turkeys |
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| Western Bluebird |
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| Western Bluebird |
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| Western Bluebirds |
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| Say's Phoebe |
Once the tour ended, I wanted to go back to one last pond towards the entrance where we had seen Buffleheads on the tour. I had hoped to get a photo of them but unfortunately they were not there anymore. In their place though were a pair of Redheads. My Mom had described to me Redheads she had seen earlier in the day but then she couldn't find them when she went to point them out to me so I was so excited to see this pair! We also got a few close ups of Northern Pintails.
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| Redheads |
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| Rehead |
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| Northern Pintail |
By that point, it had been a long day and so we headed back towards Socorro. We had dinner at
Ya Mama's Grill which was pretty good and then we retired for the night.
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