Stephen Ingraham (who?)

the unofficial site for birders and digiscopers using Zeiss equipment.

The Festival of the Cranes

Fly-out at dawn from the road north of the refuge.

The Festival of the Cranes, at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro NM (90 minutes south of Albuquerque) is the longest running birding festival in the US. It was started 18 years ago by then refuge employee and the Friends of the Bosque, with support from the local chamber of commerce and New Mexico Technical University (then the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology). It was popular from the first year, drawing people down from Albuquerque, and it has grown. It now draws visitors from all over North America. Hotel space is at a premium, and some visitors make reservations a year in advance to be sure of the accommodations they prefer.

The Festival of the Cranes has, perhaps, the highest level of community support of any festival in America. The town goes all out, with a full range of auxiliary events: art shows, cultural presentations at the Garcia Opera House and New Mexico Tech, open houses, and community dinners, etc. They even paint crane tracks on the streets to guide participants from one event venue to the others. Every hotel and most restaurants have a welcome birders sign in the window.

The Festival offers a full menu of workshops and presentations, everything from beginning birding to crane behavior...but the real attraction is the birds.

Bosque is a unique place. The sunrise fly-out and the sunset fly-in are spectacle to equal any wildlife even in the world. 50,000 Snow Geese and 10,000 Sandhill Cranes rising from or returning to the refuge where they spend the night, against the dawn or dusk sky, is something to see.

During the day you will certainly find 5000 geese and hundreds of cranes feeding in one field or another along the 18 mile tour loop. The noise (music?) of that many geese and cranes all in one spot is something to experience in itself...and should a passing Eagle put them all up in the air at the same time it is an unimaginable experience.

(Not to mention that Art Morris' School of Wildlife Photography often coincides with or overlaps the festival...and you are likely to see 50 or more Canon 600mm lenses supported by massive tripods lined up along the road where the birds are most active. That's a spectacle in itself.)

Images with larger versions available have a . Click on the image.

The New Visitor's Center	The Art Tent.
In the exhibition tent.	ditto
Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes feeding in a newly flooded field	Digiscope that!
Sandhill among the Geese.	again.
Snow Goose posing.	Cranes in flight (I wish I could have captured the noise of the calls)
Solo	Tandem
In flocks.	A goose or two.
In flight.	Startle.
Cranes in the afternoon light	Up close
Preening.	Late in the day.
Bosque boardwalk.	Clark's? Western? Hard to tell in winter plumage.
Cooper's Hawk along the loop.	Northern Pintail
Coyote looking for dinner.	An ideal place to practice flight shots (Art Morris thought so too. I was soon surrounded by man-eating 600mm telephotos.
Catching Geese on the wing is a challenge.	The DC4 makes it possible.
again.	Close formation
A sequence of the same birds (using the panorama tool in Photoshop Elements.	Arrested motion
Fly-in, as dusk falls.	Deepening day.
Birds against the sunset.	and one final memory.