Bosque – Del – Apache

A couple of weeks ago I returned from a fantastic trip to Bosque in New Mexico with Nature’s Images. I had been here before some years ago and whilst I seemed to remember where all the best spots were much had changed.

This was partly due to the unseasonably warm early winter which meant that many of the snow geese hadn’t yet travelled south. At first glance this might have seemed to be a bad start but as with all things in the wildlife world there is usually a silver lining. The warm weather, as we arrived had just turned to snowy storms north in Colorado and had started to drive the geese south to warmer climes.

This meant that almost everyday of our trip thousands of geese were flighting in giving us soma amazing opportunities.

The other star here is the sandhill crane, perhaps not the most colourful bird but certainly one full of grace. These roosted on a number of very accessible pools and allowed us to work intensively with them at both ends of the day where we hoped for colourful skies. On a few days we were not disappointed!

Most folk go to Bosque for these two species, and it’s not hard to see why, the photography can be amazing. However, the real star for me was a small quail, Gambal’s quail. This absolutely fantastic bird is quite shy, but when they do venture out of the scrub, what a bird. The colours are brilliant but the crowning glory literally, are the couple of feathers that adorn the top of the head. These bob brilliantly when they run and raise this cracking little bird into star status, well I thought so anyway!

The group we went with were fantastic, great company and banter, thanks to you all.