By Jerry Hall
My visit to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge was a resounding success. I achieved both my trip goals – I saw a massive multitude of sandhill cranes and snow geese and I avoided freezing to death.
That second goal was set after I read weather information in our advance program material: “The weather is cold and unpredictable in January. The temperatures can vary tremendously in a day.”
How true, how true. We departed for the refuge marshes shortly after 6 a.m. to watch fly-outs at sunup and returned around 5 p.m. to watch fly-ins at sundown. During the week, we experienced sunny and mild, rain and snow, windy and calm, often all on the same day. Morning temps were generally in the 20’s and afternoon highs in the 50’s. The worst combination was windy with rain, a rare affliction, thankfully.
I was saved from freezing by multiple layers of clothing and I found silk long johns and a Peruvian alpaca sweater to be especially helpful. (I’ll always be thankful to the lady street vendor in Cusco, Peru, who sold me that sweater for $10.)
Bosque del Apache – which means woods of the Apache in Spanish – is located along the Rio Grande River about 90 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was established in 1939 and includes over 8,000 acres of flood plain along the river.
There were about 20 sandhill cranes at the refuge in 1941. Today, as many as 15,000 over-winter there before moving north in the spring. The vast improvement is a result of restoration of wetland habitat and intensive management to assure plentiful food. Canals carrying river water crisscross the refuge via pump-less gravity-flow and diversion gates are used to form ponds and marshes before the water flows back into the river.
One of the wildlife events of a lifetime is the sight of thousands of snow geese, looking like a cloud of white snowflakes from a distance, rising to a whirring, honking mass that wheels in your direction and passes noisily overhead.
Equally amazing are the soaring flights of the big, gray cranes which come in with necks and legs outstretched, then drop down with flapping wings to join others for a night standing in the shallow marshes.
While sandhill cranes and snow geese are stars of the show at Bosque, they are joined by a sterling supporting cast of birds and mammals. Our group saw 71 other birds, ranging from bald eagles to yellow-headed blackbirds. We saw more than a dozen duck species, including bufflehead, common merganser and canvasback. Also making cameo appearances were mule deer, elk and pronghorn antelope. Some 48 species of large and small mammals call the refuge home, including bobcat and weasel.
Our best bird watching came along the refuge’s 12-mile wildlife drive, which offers numerous decks, boardwalks and walking trails, but the visitor center was also a productive place. There you could sit in warm comfort and look out a picture window onto a feeding area which attracted such birds as white-crowned sparrow and Gambel’s quail. In bushes at the center we got up-close views of curve-billed thrasher and canyon towhee.
This was an Exploritas (formerly Elderhostel) program, a first-time offering, and our group of 18 was the first to try it. In addition to watching wildlife, we toured a radio telescope antenna array and visited the Mineral Museum at the New Mexico Tech campus in Socorro. Both were interesting, but by all odds, birds were the premier attraction. Some 371 species have been observed on the refuge.
Not only were the cranes and geese an iconic visual experience, they also made some marvelous sounds – trills, rattles and rolling bugle calls for the cranes and nasal, noisy chortles, squawks and squeaks for the geese. All in all, I found the calls an audio delight.
If you’d like information on this Exploritas program, call 877 426-8056. For information on the refuge, visit www.friendsofthebosque.org or call 575 835-1828. While tens of thousands of cranes, geese and waterfowl spend winter at the refuge, spring and summer months also offer prime wildlife viewing.
But if you go in January, be sure to take your long johns.
