My World: Bosque del Apache

In the middle of New Mexico, surrounded by Mountains and dessert, lies an oasis that is one of the top birding locations in the United States, the Bosque del Apache.

The Bosque is a 57,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge that straddles the Rio Grande River in Central New Mexico. It is comprised of 3,800 acres of active flood plane from the Rio Grande as well as 9,100 acres of wetlands, farm land and riparian forest which was created through a system of water management. These wetlands are surrounded by arid foothills, mesas and dessert.

Because it is the only extensive wetlands in an arid region the Bosque attracts many different types of birds, over 340 species, through out the year. However many people choose to bird the Bosque during the winter months when large flocks of water fowl descend on the wetlands making it their winter home.
My last visit to the Bosque was in January of 2007, which is when I took all of the pictures in this post. It was great to be there during the peak waterfowl season.

There were a lot of ducks out on the lakes and pools when I was there. A lot of them are pretty common back home in Minnesota during the warmer months, like coots and mallards, but there were other ducks that I rarely get to see back home. In Minnesota we do not see northern pintails all that often, at least not in the eastern portions of the state, so it was a treat to get many very close views of them down at the Bosque.
There were also a few northern shovelers swimming around. Shovelers are another duck that tends to spend their time more in the western portions of the continent.

I also got a chance to see a small group of greater white-fronted geese. This was a life bird for me. These birds breed up near the arctic circle and then spend their winters down in the southern US and Mexico.

The greater white-fronted geese were on the outskirts of a large flock of snow geese. Although snow geese where not a lifer for me on this trip, we sometimes see snow geese as they migrate south plus I had seen them on a previous trip to the Bosque, they are still a bird that I have only seen a couple of times. The Bosque is usually home to over 30,000 snow and Ross geese each winter.

The snow geese are not the only things that winter at the Bosque in large numbers. Approximately 14,000 sandhill cranes spend the winter on the refuge.

Sandhill cranes nest in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin so these are birds that I have seen and photographed often but we do not usually see them in as great of numbers as is possible down at the Bosque.

The big spectacle, during the winter, are the "fly in" at dusk and the "fly out" at dawn. Each day large flocks of birds spend their day out in the fields and farmland looking for food, but at night they come back to roost on the shallow pools of the Bosque. The times when the birds are coming in "fly in" or leaving "fly out" attract large crowds of spectators.

The Bosque has many different types of habitat, besides the wetlands, to explore. The arid hilly regions were habitat that was different then anything that I have near home.
Some of the birds preferred the habitat of these dry open hills. Many raptors could be found circling these areas looking for prey. The raptors that I saw at the Bosque were eagles, red-tailed hawks, coopers hawks, American kestrel and mostly northern harrier, like pictured above.
There were also quite a few passerines and other small birds that were birds that I do not often see like roadrunners, spotted towhee and red shafted northern flickers, the northern flickers that we see in Minnesota or typically yellow-shafted.

Medicine Lake NWR Waterfowl

Our adventure began on Thursday May 15th. We left the Twin Cities that morning and spent most of the day driving to Williston, ND. Williston is on the west side of North Dakota near the border with Montana. I chose Willistone because of it's close proximity to Medicine Lake NWR. The plan was to spend Friday and part of Saturday at Medicine Lake. We visited Medicine Lake on our way home from Yellowstone last year and had such good luck that we decided to leave a couple days early so that we could stop and spend some time on our way out. Medicine Lake is a great birding location for waterfowl and shorebirds but the main reason that we visit is to photograph eared grebe in breeding plumage. This year our luck was not nearly so good. Unbeknownst to us, at the time, Montana appears to be going through a bit of a drought. The drought did not effect the Medicine Lake so much, but many of the other lakes and bays that are near to the roads, and thus places where we got many of our pics last year, were dried up. We were still able to find some waterfowl though.
The most common of the waterfowl that we saw where either blue-winged teals

or northern shovelers.
We did find one pair of northern pintails in a small tributary that was still feeding into the lake.
We did find some eared grebe but they were on the big lake and too far to get any shots that compared with those that we got last year. We also did see a pair of western grebes out on the big lake. The western grebes were also pretty far out but since we do not already have close up shots of western grebes I decided to add another 1.4x converter and snap a couple of shots.
Another thing that Medicine Lake NWR is known for is that it is the location of one of the largest white pelican breeding colonies in the world.
We went out to the pelican over look to view one of the peninsulas that the pelican colony uses for nesting. The peninsula is blocked by an electric fence and gate. These protect the females and the young from predators like coyote, fox and raccoon. Unfortunately it also makes it difficult to get any good pics so we decided to just stop and have a picnic there and watch the pelicans fly out over the lake. Later on I did find these 3 white pelicans taking of near Gopher Point so I was able to get a couple of nice shots.

We also saw quite a few shorebirds as well as some passerines but since this post is getting long I will put them in my next post.

Birding in Monticello

On February 23 I travelled up to Monticello, MN to get some more pictures of the trumpeter swans that have gathered here before they head out for their summer territories.
The swans gather here because there is usually open water all year round due to the Excel Energy Power Plant that is upstream.
It also helps that there is a woman, the Swan Lady, who feeds the swans.
That is right, there is a woman who is feeding hundreds if not thousands of swans here.
Her home is next to a small park that is on the river. They have a large feed trailer parked in their driveway and a duct system that transports cracked corn from the trainer to large bins which she uses like a trough down at the shore line.
At feeding time she makes her way from her house down to the shore, surrounded by hundreds of mallards and Canadian geese. She carries a large bucket filled with cracked corn which she tosses out to the ducks and geese as she walks.

Down at the shore the swans begin to gather around. The Swan Lady opens up the corn duct and feed pours down the hill to the river side. Each trip she fills up a couple of large buckets and uses them to fill 10 or more large tubs, which act as troughs, down on the shore.
besides the trumpeter swans, Canadian geese and mallards there were also a few odd waterfowl. Out in the river there were a few common goldeneye and common merganser. On the shore I found a female northern pintail in with the other ducks looking for a hand out.
There was also a pair of woodducks. it was easy to see that the female was in charge in this relationship, as the male followed her around wherever she went.
There was also this mystery bird. My guess is that it is some escaped or released domestic bird.
If anyone knows what type of bird this is I would appreciate it if you could let me know. Just add a comment below.

Thanks.

Northern pintail at Vadnais Lake

Over the past few weeks it has been pretty grey and overcast here in Minnesota, which is pretty typical for the winter months here. On the few occasions that we have seen some sun I have taken advantage of the opportunity and gone out and done some birding. One of the locations that I have been birding at quite a bit recently is Vadnais Lake. Vadnais Lake is on the north east side of the Twin Cities and is not very far from where I work. The lake is split into two halves with a one way road running through the middle. The road is controlled by St Paul Water Management and is used for fishing, hiking, cycling, and birding.

The first few weeks in November the lake was also a staging area for ducks and other waterfowl migrating south to stop, eat and rest up for the remained of their journey. This presented Twin Cities birders with good close up looks at birds who tended to stay near the shoreline of the road.

One of the ducks that I got to see was the northern pintail.

Northern Pintails typically nest in Alaska, Canada, and the central United States as well as northern Europe and Asia. They build a nest on the ground made of grass, leaves and down. The nest is hidden by tall grass or brush and is typically not near the water. The clutch consists of 3 to 12 greenish eggs.

In the winter the Northern Pintail migrate south to the southern US, Central America and the very north edge of South America, southern Europe, Asia and Northern Africa on the Eurasia side.

When I visited the Bosque del Apache, back in February, there were pintails all over but at lake Vadnais there was only one pintail. He was grouped in with a small flock of mallards.

This makes some sense since both mallards and pintails are dabbling ducks. This means that they usually eat plants off the bottom of the lake, river, stream, pond or pool by tipping their tails up into the air and submerging their necks and heads. Other dabblers include wigeons, shovelers, gadwall, and true teals. Swans and geese also typically feed in the dabbling style.

Medicine Lake waterfowl and waders

While browsing the Internet several months ago I came across a site of a photographer who had gotten some great pics of eared grebe in breeding plumage. I was fascinated by the shots and fortunately for me the website listed that the photographs had been taken at Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge in early June. So I did some research and found that Medicine Lake was located in Montana near the North Dakota border. Since we were planning on going back through Montana and North Dakota on our way back from Yellowstone we made a plan to make a one day side trip to Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
Medicine Lake is a pretty flat refuge with only a few slight rolling hills and even fewer trees. The two areas that have any trees to speak of are the area around the headquarters and the picnic area where the only bathroom, outhouse style, is located. The Picnic area is where we spotted the great horned owls and their nest. The majority of the park is Medicine Lake and the adjacent smaller lakes which are managed through a series of damns and dikes. We found a lot of waterfowl and waders on the small lakes and potholes.

We saw a few american avocet wading through the shallows, their heads were rusty red with the breeding plumage.
Mixed in with the avocets we saw a couple of marbled godwit.
There were quite a few Killdeer both on the shore of the lake and scouring the dirt roads.
The Wilson's Phalarope were also in breeding plumage. They swam, mostly in pairs, in tight circles close to the shore of the smaller lakes.
The eared grebe where in breading plumage and were magnificent. There were quite a few of them around.

About 10 of them swam under a small bridge that we were parked on giving us perfect views and marvelous pictures.


There was also a pair of western grebe near the highway on Medicine Lake.
We also got some good shots of several types of ducks.

They included ruddy ducks,

northern pintails
northern shoveler
and blue-winged teal.

After a day full of clouds on Friday as we drove across Montana, the weather on Saturday was perfect. The great weather, the owls, the eared grebes, and all the great shots that we got helped to make up for some of the things that we missed, and the bad weather that we had in Yellowstone. We also saw a few prairie birds in the fields surrounding the lake but I will include them in my next Medicine Lake post.