Favorite Places – Bosque del Apache

Winter Landscape at Bosque del Apache

Bosque del Apache is a National Wildlife Refuge along the Rio Grande River in central New Mexico,widely  known to bird photographers as the place to photograph Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese in winter. These birds occur here in the 10’s of thousands, and their mass movements at dawn and late in the day are a phenomenon that draws photographers, birders, and other nature lovers in large numbers from November through February each winter.

We first visited in 1998 and have returned most years ever since. It is a pleasant drive of 8 hours or so from Phoenix, especially if you travel all the way on U.S. 60 through the Salt River Canyon, the White Mountains, across the continental divide at Pie Town, and past the Very Large Array near Magdalena to Socorro, NM.

I’ve taken many photos of birds at Bosque del Apache, as has every other photographer who has ever visited. But my favorite images from there have been simple landscapes like this image along the Marsh Loop drive. I find the colors here to be unlike any others, with wonderful browns and tans against subtle blues and grays. The sky often has delicate clouds to give some texture, or sometimes spectacular storm fronts.

The Friends of the Bosque hold an annual Festival of the Cranes in mid November, and it draws large numbers of people who are carried around the loop roads in buses. We time our visits to avoid this! Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are all much better times to experience some of the peaceful nature of the refuge.

This image is my all-time favorite from Bosque del Apache. It captures the tranquil nature that I experience when I visit, and makes me want to be there now. It is a simple shot, taken with my Nikon D70 and 18-70mm “kit” zoom at 40mm, ISO 200, 1/100th second and f/16 on November 27, 2006 at 8:51 AM. I felt compelled to stop and take it. I wonder if anyone else even noticed it in their haste to get to the cranes and geese?

White-crowned Sparrow in Desert Broom

White-crowned Sparrow in Desert Broom

A lot of beginning bird photographers get frustrated because they think they need to get  a tight shot of the bird, and eliminate everything else from the composition. This requires a lot of optical power (i.e., a long telephoto lens), a large bird (why herons and egrets are such popular subjects), and a cooperative bird (so they can get very close). This often causes beginners to crop too much (to get small subjects bigger in the final frame) or to clone out a lot of branches that clutter the composition. When that fails to give satisfactory results a backyard set-up (to lure birds in close to a positioned perch) is often the next step.

But if you can learn to see beyond just the bird, there’s a lot of potential to do things differently. My preference is to show my subjects in appropriate habitat, and that allows me to keep the bird at smaller scale in the frame and use the surroundings as part of the overall composition.

This juvenile White-crowned Sparrow is shown feeding on Desert Broom at the Water Ranch in Gilbert, AZ. For me, it is the setting that makes this image as we are not accustomed to seeing the sparrow “buried” in a cloud of soft white fluff. The sparrow is only a small part of the image, but it is the focal point for the viewer because its dark tones contrast strongly with the fluff.

D200, 300/2.8 plus 2x, ISO 200, 1/80th second at f/11, November 24, 2006

How to kill a cormorant

Neotropic Cormorant and fishing line

There’s no nice way to deal with this topic, so I’ll just be blunt as I often am. This Neotropic Cormorant is dead because someone didn’t dispose of their used fishing line properly or responsibly. Shame on whoever this was.

I was about to leave the Water Ranch in Gilbert, AZ, on Monday morning when another couple insisted I come see the “cormorant caught in the tree.” When I got to the spot (the largest tree along the trails and a favorite roost for cormorants and night-herons) I saw this nasty sight. The bird was still moving, but only for a few moments. The tree is on a small island, separated from the trail by a wide channel of reclaimed waste water and thick mesquite brambles. The cormorant was 25-30 feet above and out on the thinnest bare branches. Forty years ago I might have been able to get up to the bird, but all I could do was take photos to document this senseless and unnecessary death.

I sent the image to the ranger for the Water Ranch, who replied:

Thank you.  We did know about the cormorant and we actually took a fisherman back to show what happens when birds and fishing line tangle.  He is a regular and will communicate how to deal with birds that may get hooked or tangled so they don’t end up like the bird you saw.

I wish I could have done more.

Keep going back

Gila Woodpecker on Saguaro fruit

Many photographers depend on travel to new locations to provide inspiration for their images, and there’s no denying that seeing a place for the first time is exciting and rewarding photographically.

But I don’t think it is necessary to travel to new places (or to see “new” birds) to make exciting images. It can be just as rewarding to keep going back to favorite familiar places and see “old” subjects in new ways.

I spend a lot of time at the Water Ranch in Gilbert, AZ – 2-3 hours at a time on a typical morning visit that I try to make a couple of times each week. There’s plenty of ground to cover via a series of paths around seven shallow impoundments used to recharge the ground water with treated waste water. Water levels change daily in the ponds, so you never can be sure what conditions will be like for any visit.

By visiting so many times since the facility opened as community open space I’ve seen over 280 species of birds there, and I have learned where certain species prefer to feed or roost, and what species will likely be around at any time of year.

But even though I’ve seen and photographed the “regular” species a lot at the Water Ranch, I still pay attention to them when I visit. And being alert pays off, as with the Gila Woodpecker hanging from the fruit of a Saguaro Cactus to feed on the sweet pulp. I’ve got a lot of shots of this species in an upright position on the side of the cactus, just as you’d expect to see a woodpecker. I’ve also got my share of shots of young birds peeking out of nest cavities while a parent brings food. But I’ve only seen this feeding behavior once, and I could easily have missed it if I didn’t keep going back and didn’t pay attention to the “common” species.

ISO 200, 1/160th second at f/8, D200, 300/2.8 and 2x converter, 06/06/07

Feral Cats

Feral Cat, Gilbert Water Ranch

We’ve lived with cats in the house for almost 40 years, so it is hard for me to understand how people can turn loose a pet cat to live on its own. Its not good for the cat, and its not good for the native species living wherever the cat is dumped.

Feral cats such as this one are a big problem at the Water Ranch in Gilbert, AZ, where I spend a lot of time looking at birds and photographing them. On a typical morning visit of 2-3 hours I probably see a dozen different cats hiding in the bushes. This morning I saw one climbing out a branch with a mockingbird scolding it from higher in the tree. A friend even got a photo of one carrying a freshly killed stilt chick across the mudflat.

If you care at all for your pet cat, or for the natural world and the species that live there, you will not release the cat and make it live on its own.

This attractive cat was probably a recent release when I photographed it December of 2005 as it looks to be in good shape with a healthy coat and little, and since it wasn’t completely afraid of me.