A Bird Photography Weekend at Bosque del Apache NWR, December 2022

I had been discussing the possibility of re-visiting Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico for the last several months with Skip Stubbs, and we finally decided to commit a weekend and get out there. It had been 12 years since I was last there and I was looking forward to it.  The goal was to watch and photograph large gatherings of sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) and snow geese (Chen caerulescens) that over-winter in the refuge set between the Chupadera Mountains and San Pasqual mountains along the Rio Grande.  And to spend time hanging out with old dive friends whom we had not seen since the before times.  Bosque del Apache NWR is easy to reach being just an hour south of Albuquerque.  We have always stayed in the town of Socorro and this time was no exception.  The dining options were somewhat limited compared to our last time there, still the six of us managed to gather each night in a different restaurant for decent food and drink and good conversation (mostly about diving trips we had all shared in the past).

The birds were a little different than I remember.  In past years we would arrive well before dawn to find thousands of snow geese in the main “impoundment” (a pond maintained for the benefit of the birds, so that they can overnight in water out of reach of predators) and would await their mass “fly out” as sunrise.  This year, however, we found that the snow geese over-nighted elsewhere, but for some reason would fly in to the main impoundment just before sunrise.  So, we watched incoming geese in the many hundreds rather than departing geese in the many thousands.  Right around sunrise we would leave the Flight Deck area and head to the “crane pools”.  Only one crane pool was full this year.  In these pools sandhill cranes would spend the night, arriving the night before at dusk and departing in small groups as the morning sun warmed them, heading out to corn fields to forage throughout the day.  The surface of the pool was typically frozen, meaning these cranes had stood all night in ice.  This year the crane pool was where I had the most fun and took the most photos.  It is honestly like shooting fish in a barrel, the photography is so easy with so many birds and such perfect light and wind angles.

Once most of the cranes had left their overnight pool, we would take a leisurely drive around the “loop”, the main roadway through the refuge, just looking for birds.  We saw a few eagles, a number of northern harriers and javelina, and of course many cranes.  But since the corn in the refuge had “failed” due to drought (according to one of the refuge staff), many of the birds foraged outside of the refuge this year. This may have explained why it seemed the bird numbers were down this year on the refuge loop compared to what we had experienced in the past.  We would take a break midday, then return for another loop through the refuge in late afternoon.  Finally, we would end up back at the crane pool, watching the cranes arrive at the end of the day to spend the night standing in shallow water.  Repeat the next day.  It was a pretty successful strategy for surveying the bird and animal activity in the area and one we used in past years as well.

In the years since I had last been in Bosque del Apache I have cycled through a number of cameras, and had largely switched from Canon to Nikon. (I shoot Nikon for all of my underwater subjects, and any topside situation shorter than 200mm).  However, I have always maintained one Canon camera for my super-telephoto (it happens to be a 200-400 right now) and currently that is a Canon R5.  This camera, coupled with the amazing 200-400 lens, is a game changer for me. Bird photography has never been so easy. The camera simply gets the bird in sharp focus nearly all the time.  I could go into what settings I use for the Canon R5 for birds in flight but won’t do that here, the point is: the R5 is great and has made photographing birds much easier for me than ever before.

Below are some of my favorites from this year at Bosque del Apache.  You can see lots more from past years here.  Cheers and thanks for looking!