DVOC - Bosque del Apache

Day one of the DVOC field trip to New Mexico. – Today, we had three main objectives: meet at the Albuquerque Airport, bird at the Rio Grande Nature Center and bird at the Petroglyph National Monument. The first object hinged on our three groups of travels all arriving in Albuquerque as scheduled. Steve and Nancy arrive the day before and only had to find us at the Enterprise Rental Car Counter. This was more a challenge than we had thought it would be as the counter was not on the airport grounds as we had originally thought but a couple miles away. Next Adrian, Bert, Tom, Bill, Naomi, Colin, Don, Jayne, Connie, Deborah and Doris all arrived as promised by American Airlines and Martin, Dennis, Anna, Dennis and Fran all arrived as promised by Continental Airlines. All of which fell into place as scheduled. Since the American Airlines crew arrived 15 minutes ahead of the Continental crew, Adrian and Colin went to get the vans. We were finally rolling from the airport a little after noon. A quick stop at Subway/Burger King for lunch and then we were off to the Rio Grande Nature Center.

The pond at the nature center held our first surprise and our first target species. The surprise was a nice drake Eurasian Wigeon and the target was Cackling Goose. We ticked them both off right away along with Ring-necked Duck, American Wigeon, Mallard, Gadwall, American Coot and Lesser Scaup. While working the waterfowl, we had the first few Sandhill Cranes fly overhead. Certainly, nothing but a mere drop in the bucket of what we will see in Bosque Del Apache but still always a treat to see and HEAR these birds. A walk along the trails of the nature center provided us with Dark-eyed Juncos (Oregon and Pink-sided races), White-breasted Nuthatch, White-crowned Sparrows, Mountain Chickadees, Bewick’s Wren, Pine Siskin, Downy Woodpecker, and Spotted Towhee. We also had a Botta’s Ground Squirrel working on its burrow near the entrance to the center. A look at the pond from this side of the nature center yielded a dozen or more Wood Ducks and some Northern Shoveler. We never found the “sparrow” flock that had been in the area and the resident Western Screech-owl was not being cooperative but still it was a great 90-minute start to the trip.

At 2:00, we headed off to Petroglyph National Monument.
Here our targets were birds of high desert sage habitat: Sage Sparrow, Crissal and Curve-billed Thrasher and Rock Wren. We found the monument to be a bit quiet bird-wise although we did have plenty of Rock Wrens, two fly-by Say’s Phoebes, a quick look as a Sage Sparrow or two, several more White-crowned Sparrows, a Canyon Towhee and Bewick’s Wren. We also had Desert Cottontail and Black-tailed Jackrabbit to add to the mammal list. We were now truly losing light and since it had been a long day for most of us, we headed to the Comfort Inn. We did our day’s checklist at 6:00 before heading over to the Rio Grande Yacht Club Inn for dinner. While there may or may not be a yacht club but it was a decent meal and a fine way to wrap up the first day of this adventure. Tomorrow we head up to Sandia Crest for some high altitude (10,000 feet) birding especially all three rosy-finches.