Oct. 23-24: Basque del Apache

Basque del Apache is a bird/wildlife reserve about 101 miles south of Albuquerque. It is most well known for the fall and winter influx of sandhill cranes and snow geese. Hundreds of the cranes start arriving in October and culminate with max numbers by December. The have a yearly crane festival here at the end of November and as one person put it, "The cranes somehow know to arrive in large numbers during the weekend of the festival."

To give you an idea of the size of these cranes, look carefully at the picture or double click on it to enlarge it, and you will see a duck in the pond behind the cranes. Most of these cranes are about 3' tall with their necks extended and have a wingspan larger that an eagle. Only a whooping crane has a larger wingspan.


As we drove through the refuge we at first saw only small clusters of 3-10 cranes but the more we drove around the more we saw and can probably estimate that we saw about 600-700. We went back in the evening and watched the cranes "fly in" to their safe refuge for the night. Tried to get up and out in the morning to see them "fly out" at sunrise but it was dark and cold. So we just stayed in and drank our coffee.

At one point as were watching several of the cranes feeding, we noticed a coyote lurking in the background. Though we thought he would pounce, he did not and in fact just mingled in the field with them. Then we saw another coyote grazing with about 7-8 cranes right next to him. According to the information we got from people, two coyotes circle around the cranes and then while one distracts them, the other approaches them and mingles in close. And then goes in for the kill. Fortunately for us and the cranes, something distracted him and they both ran off. Enlarge this photo and you will see one of them left of center in the background.

While watching the cranes, we looked up and hundreds of snow geese flew in. They landed at a pond too far to be photographed, but I did get this shot of them coming in.












Our original plan was to leave this morning to drive to Las Cruces. But it was raining................So we stayed here another day, will go see the cranes come in at sunset if the rain stops and leave tomorrow. The rain did stop and we went back in the evening to watch the fly out.

Today is a lazy day.........Barb worked on organizing paperwork and I just did stuff on the computer. Good restful day for both of us.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb