Blue Goose ~ Day 208

December 21, 2014 ~ Alamogordo, NM to Roswell, NM

Today was a pleasant scenic drive north and east to Roswell, NM, through the Sacramento Mountains, past several casinos on the Mescalero (Apache) reservation, through the Lincoln National Forest and then, rather suddenly, I was on the high plains, with a distinct sense of leaving the west behind and entering the prairies.

Sierra Blanca - NM

The Pecos River runs south just east of Roswell, down to the Rio Grande; its headwaters are in the Sangre de Cristo range in northern New Mexico. The Pecos and Roswell are near the western edge of the Llano Estacado, a huge flat plain or mesa, mostly in Texas. Before there were fence lines and roads homes and utility poles, it was so immense, flat and featureless that white people easily got lost, going in circles, wandering for days, trying to move through the Llano.  It slopes to the east at an unnoticeable 10 feet per mile, and then ends abruptly in the middle of the Texas Panhandle in a rugged steep escarpment and canyons called the Caprock. Two of the books I read recently were set in this area. I had never heard of the Llano Estacado before reading Lords of the Plains by Max Crawford, a novel based on the US military routing of the Comanches. The other book was The Worst Hard Time, set in northwest Texas during the Dust Bowl. So I now drove through this region with somewhat enlightened eyes and mind.

Roswell was not a weird little dusty town full of shops and museums catering to tourists interested in aliens. I did see a few signs for that, but it was very different from what I expected. Roswell has 50,000 people and is New Mexico's fifth largest city. It stretches north-south for four to five miles.

I was on a mission.  I often check eBird for any county or place in which I plan to linger (like spend the night) and this was Chaves County where a Common Crane was being seen quite regularly, a bird that is a "rare vagrant" to the US since the species usually winter in North Africa. Somehow, an occasional Common Crane gets mixed in with flocks Sandhill Cranes and travels with them. I'm not sure anyone knows why this happens but it does excite birders, as the Common Crane is a Code IV (out of VI) bird. Code VI birds "cannot be found" and Code V birds show up about once a decade.  Code IV are "Casual" and don't always show up every year. Code III birds are the "Rare" birds, seen more often than Code IVs. So a Code IV is something to "chase" when it pretty much falls in one's lap.

I eventually found a field where Sandhills were feeding, in the Milky Way Dairy fields, on Milky Way Road, just south of Roswell. I pulled onto a farm road, got out my scope and was immediately discouraged. It was breezy for one thing, slightly chilly. And there were hundreds or thousands of cranes feeding in the distance. But, I persevered and adjusted the scope for maximum scanning and found I could pick out individual birds. I mostly needed to see the head pattern as the CCrane's head is black and white, although never having seen one, I wasn't sure exactly how well it would stick out. And cranes feed a lot with their heads DOWN.

A guy pulled up behind me in a big pickup with an open trailer bed loaded with heavy equipment. He did not look like a person who would be hauling around a Swarovski scope, but that's exactly what he did. He also was not from Roswell but working (I never did ask) at what seemed like independent contracting, doing something heavy-duty outside judging from what he was driving. So he, too, scanned from the lee of his big truck.

Another pickup pulled directly behind me at an angle and a handsome young man with a little boy in the back seat asked if he could help. (Earlier while I was on a road edge trying to find the right field, a woman stopped and asked if she could help..."Are you lost?") I explained to the guy what I was doing and he said, "Why would you do that?" He seemed genuinely perplexed but settled down when he realized how innocuous birders are. This was his property, so he was checking us out. He then suggested I move "up by the manure piles where you might get better looks....in fact, you can walk between the piles and get close..." And I did that, but did not see the crane and left after 90 minutes. I had an hour before sunset so I went to Bitter Lake NWR, eight miles east of town, and drove the six-mile auto loop around wetlands and the lake.

There were thousands of water birds here, including Snow Geese, some of which were close to the road, allowing decent photos. At one point, I realized I had an American Bittern in the viewfinder while focusing on the geese! always a nice sighting for this slow moving, well camouflaged bird.

American Bittern and Snow Goose - Bitter Lake NWR - NM

I passed a couple with out-of-state license plates watching the Sandhills move in to roost for the night. And there was a Mexican family with three young girls all dressed white fancy dresses with thin straps over their bare shoulders and a little boy in a suit with a bow tie. The wind was blowing and the sun was setting. It wasn't very warm. They were laughing and running back to their car, just out for a drive with parents on this Sunday or returning from a celebration or party? Their fancy white dresses, beautiful brown skin and black hair whipped by the wind will always stay with me. It was incongruous to see them here this time of day but a lovely vignette.

As I left to go back to Roswell in the dusk, I passed a man on horseback on the road in the opposite land, silhouetted against the last light in the sky.

Bitter Lake NWR - NM