Blue Goose ~ Day 209

December 22, 2014 ~ Roswell, NM to Hereford, TX

I WAS up early and went to a McDonalds until 30 minutes before sunrise. The forecast had been for temperatures in the 30s in the morning, but it was 50 degrees As I drove east, the sky reddened with a gorgeous pre-sunrise display.

Driving toward Bitter Lake NWR in the morning - NM

I went to the east side of the wetlands and got out my scope after finding a huge group of Sandhills. I looked as best I could through the flock, although some were hidden by various weeds, brush and marsh grasses. After 30 minutes, I moved on and found an even larger group slightly to the south, so set up again, looked carefully through a thousand birds and found the Common Crane. Once I saw a black and white something, I knew what it was and focussed better to see it clearly. It stayed in that spot for an hour. I got a few blurry photos but it was too far for any detail. A man and woman drove up and asked if I had "seen the crane" so of course I was elated to point it out. After a couple of minutes of searching and trying to pinpoint exactly where, based on horizon features and telephone poles, they found it also. The guy lives in DC; the lady lives locally and was an active Audubon member. He used to work for USFWS and has a related job now in DC (lobbying?) and had a huge telephoto lens. His photos were much better but he acknowledged were not optimal as the crane was at such a distance.

Common Crane and Sandhills (Common is the black and white blob left of center)
 - Bitter Lake NWR - NM

Another woman from Arizona came and we talked about birding and her job teaching English at a boarding school for Native Americans. She was "chasing" also and had brought her college-age daughter and some of her students along. They were all back in the motel sleeping but had seen the crane yesterday feeding in the fields.

I still am amazed that this so often works: finding out about a rare bird, going to the venue and actually seeing it. But it does...

Snow Geese - Bitter Lake NWR - NM

I left Roswell at noon in bright sunshine with the temperature at 71 degrees and headed for Texas. Right before the border is Grulla (GRU ya) NWR and I wasn't going to stop there, but really, it was on my way and an excuse to get off the main road. I found the sign but the road was a narrow cut through fields, up a rise in the distance and full of tumbleweeds. The DC guy had said this was a small unremarkable refuge so I didn't check it out as, once again, the van is not really a vehicle for getting too far off-road. I continued into Texas (now on the Llano), and I could see to the edges of the earth in all directions. Today, there are ranches and some cultivated crops (cotton, for instance) but the sky still dominates everything. I often passed derelict abandoned homesteads of which there were many hereabouts.

The sky clouded with massive grey clouds that would have been more ominous in April. I drive in the turn-off for Muleshoe NWR but didn't go down that road either. It was getting too close to night, and I had an hour to drive yet. But I later read that the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC) on Muleshoe this year yielded 72 birds. I'm sorry I missed exploring it.

The temperature had been dropping all day. It was now below 40 and still dropping and rain began. Great...I was in the worst conditions: rain, dark, falling temperatures, busy road and really no idea exactly where I would stay. So I pulled over and checked out Hereford when I got to the city limits and, yes, there was a Walmart which I found. I rummaged in the store a bit, getting a Subway sandwich for dinner.

I can't leave the windows cracked at all when it is raining as the drips roll off the roof into the tiniest open space. The rain turned to slush and snow but I figured I would deal with the consequences in the morning, read some and went to sleep.

Llano Estacado - West Texas