We continued on I40E and Denise noted the 30 miles of landscape she missed in the dark probably looked the same as what she saw as the sun went down and what she saw as the sun came up. We turned on the radio and found the old country station, KMINE, "mining country gold" by playing songs recorded in the 1960s and advertisements for clean laundry mats with large capacity washers and dries and gun stores with bear and turkey ammo. Sadly, heading east at 75 mph ended quickly and we dropped south on 6 and then I25. There were pastures, trains, and very few gas stations which is a bit scary as my gas light popped on about 20 miles from Los Lunas (the next town). I figured it would happen, but it's still disconcerting.
Finally we made it to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. This is just off the Rio Grande (the same Rio Grande that makes the US/Mexico border). They are doing Riparian forest (Bosque) restoration. They've got some mammals and a ton of birds. For those who are adventurous, identify the birds below before skipping down to read what they are.
Need a hint? Here's our bird list:
Greater Sandhill Crane, Lesser Sandhill Crane, Mallard, Coot, Pintails, Northern Shoveler, Spotted Towhee, Bewick's Wren, White Crowed Sparrows (which we are now extremely good at identifying), Sparrow Hawk, Say's Phoebe, Snow Geese, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Harrier, Bald Eagles, Red Tail Hawks, Lewis Woodpecker, Red Winged Blackbird, Green-winged Teal, Ringneck Duck, Western Meadowlark, Northern Flicker and Canada Geese
Answer: Northern Shovelers and Sandhill Cranes (I think lesser, but unless they are side by side, in the winter they are identical except for size).
The refuge is made up of Cottonwood and a few other native trees alongside fields, canals and ponds -- all carefully flood controlled and supplemented with corn. In addition to the birds, mountain lions, javelina, bobcats, and elk are commonly sighted. We saw none of those, and Catherine was rather glad to not to have encountered the mountain lion walking along the sandy cliffs of the Marsh loop. We did see 2 herds of about 9 mule deer and a coyote. The picture below is of one typical ponds -- the blobs are Bald Eagles.
What is difficult to explain is the sheer number of birds in the wildlife refuge. We saw thousands of Pintails -- there are nearly 50,000 ducks, 40,000 Snow Geese and 10,000 sandhill cranes. The white in the picture below are the snow geese just off the main road. The sandhill cranes are about 40 feet from the observation platform -- the smacking from the beaks while they mucked through the mud was impressive and when the cranes clacked in aggression, you took notice from across the field. Hawks and cranes soared overhead and in the distance, we often watched white rafts of geese fly towards the mountains. We even have video of a crane fight, but this internet connection is way too slow to share it.
After we left the wildlife refuge, we headed east on 380 which turns out to be a rather pretty, but very long straight road with cattle grazing in chaparral and mountains all around in the distance.
Of note, Trinity (the first successful nuclear bomb test) is on this route. We also stopped to take pictures of the Valley of Fires Lava flow – one of the youngest lava fields in the continental US.
In Carrizozo, we turned south on 54. If you ever find yourself in Carrizozo, pay attention to the speed limits; they stay slow FOREVER outside the town and the cops were making money with the speed traps. Thankfully, Catherine was poking along and did not get pulled. We made it to Alamagordo which is the town that services Holloman AFB. It’s a big town with an enormous Walmart supercenter. Based on her experience in the Supercenter, Catherine believes the town is 95% Caucasian, 4.9% Hispanic and Native American, and 0.1% African American. 90% of the people are less than 30 and, of those 18 or older, 90% have 1-6 kids at Walmart.
For Catherine, a highlight of the day was getting both Vermont and Alaska license tags today! She thinks we’ll see 48 different state tags and knew those would be rough. Thus far we have 29, but are still missing FL, NY and NC so there are still low hanging fruit. We didn’t see any CA tags today. Oh, Denise thinks we’ll only see 40.
Denise's highlights of the day: Forget the cranes and snow geese, she spotted not 1, but 2 Roadrunners! One even ran across the road in front of us, turned around and ran back and then stood there looking at us. Of course, at this point we were stopped in the middle of a paved highway, but as it is New Mexico, we didn't stop any traffic.
Tomorrow, White Sands, Pistachio Farming and Roswell!
No comments:
Post a Comment