Monday, December 8, 2008
Volunteer CG, Bosque del Apache NWR, NM: Dec 1-3
Joe & Bonnie Nemmers, whom we met in Albuquerque this spring and at The Ranch in prior years, were volunteers here and as such were able to extend us an invitation to stay for 3 nights (if we were willing to do some volunteer work we could have stayed longer). Bosque del Apache is a magical place, and we are re-energized every time we visit here. "The Bosque" straddles the Rio Grande, which, like the Nile, used to overflow its banks every spring & flood the surrounding area, thereby re-fertilizing & re-vegetating the soil. Now a series of dikes & watergates simulate this activity. As a measure of their success, 17 sandhill cranes wintered at the Bosque in 1941; today more than a thousand times that number winter here. There were only about 5000 during our stay -- they don't peak until Jan & Feb -- but there were over 20,000 snow (& Ross's) geese.
The big events of the day are the fly-out & fly-in. The fly-out is more dramatic, with thousands of snow geese (they don't all over-night together) circling in the water, honking & flapping their wings, and then suddenly, for whatever reason, they all decide to take off -- no one wants to be the last one out. From afar it looks like snow in a snow-globe swirling upwards, up close the noise is staggering -- a sudden explosion of wingbeats. It sounds like someone suddenly turning on a very loud motor. We got up early to witness the spectacle our first & third mornings. We were successful the first, but the other time the geese had already flown, even though we arrived at the same time.
On the second morning we accepted an invitation to help band ducks. A grad student is doing research involving pintails where basically they attach a net to a rocket and shoot it off, capturing a bunch of ducks. He then takes blood samples and hands them over to an assistant to band them. This day's catch was disappointingly low -- only 4 pintails & 3 mallards (and one pintail escaped). He likes to get 12 pintails, but the low number was fine with us, since there wasn't really anything for us to do other than ask questions & take pictures. They did let us watch closely and then release some of the ducks. Fortunately it was the warmest morning of the three. That afternoon we drove around the main driving loop with Bonnie & watched a fly-in. The pond we stopped at already looked pretty full, but as it got closer to sunset, you could look towards their feeding-grounds & see wave after wave of geese flying in V-formation, all silhouetted against the nearby hills, heading for the ponds near us. Each new wave would somehow find places to land, and we never saw one goose land on top of another.Our last night Joe made pizza for us & another couple, which was excellent, and we then played six-person "Oh Hell". The woman of the other couple, who made an excellent chocolate dessert, had played "Oh Hell" MANY years ago and had been wanting to re-learn it.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 10:02 PM 
