29 Dec 2002
Sunrise is the most exciting time of day at Bosque
del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. Each morning at dawn,
some 5-10 thousand Snow Geese, with a few Ross' Geese mixed in, fly up en masse
from the shallow lake where they spend the night. They're easy to find:
just look for about 25 SUVs lining the nearby shore. Beside each vehicle will be a
photographer with a long telephoto lens mounted on his or her camera.
Charlotte and I leave our Socorro motel and have breakfast in pre-dawn
darkness, then drive to the spot just as light first appears in the eastern sky.
Excitement among both birds and humans mounts as the birds awaken, bathe in the freezing
water, flex their wings, and become more vocal. The sun's first rays hit the lake -
now a few dozen birds here and there take flight. Then suddenly without
warning, they all lift away - the roar of their wings is like a tornado wind. It is
an amazing spectacle, guaranteed to impress even the most blasé birder.
It's over in a few minutes, as the geese fly north to fields where they'll feed during the day. We bird around the Flight Deck observation platform, watching Pintails, Northern Shovelers, and a few Sandhill Cranes.
Then it's off to
the visitor center, to 
warm up and get some surprisingly good coffee (Socorro restaurants
offer little competition). By now the sun is well up, and we watch birds coming to
water provided just outside the center: Gambel's Quail, Red-winged Blackbirds,
American Crows, Spotted Towhees, Dark-eyed (Oregon) Juncos, but
most of all White-crowned Sparrows - dozens of them swarm in the brushy areas around the
visitor center. They're fairly tame, but usually perch within the dense shrubs,
seldom allowing a clear view. Unlike the black and white crowns of adults, those of
the first-winter birds are tan and brown. They are handsome nonetheless, as sparrows
go.