Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sandhill Crane Behavior - part 3

The photo below is another part or area of the Bosque del Apache. This marshy area was flooded before the festival began. Many of the fields throughout the Bosque are flooded to create wetland habitat. The marshes also provide food and protection for many of the resident birds as well as for the migrating birds. The Bosque has a total of 35 managed units, and this is a photo of one of them, one of those units that is open to the public.
As mentioned in my previous post, we were in the "field" (or better said one of the fields) observing the behavior of the Sandhill cranes. While observing them and their behavior traits, we also were given a beautiful display by none other than flocks of Snow and Ross' geese.

You may want to enlarge this photo (below) to get a better view. Among all those beautiful snow/ross' geese there is a Northern Harrier. He/she is located on the far left of the picture. I'm not sure if the harrier was "chasing" the flock or if it was just "sharing" the sky, but I felt it made a very interesting picture.
Shortly afterwards, we saw this harrier in the field not far from where the cranes were feeding. This was the best shot I could get since the bird was quite a distance away from where we were standing. Click on the photo to enlarge it.
The rest of the afternoon we had free to ourselves; we didn't sign up for any tour or hike, so we had the chance to get out to the Bosque again after lunch and look around on our own. More in my next post.

2 comments:

RuthieJ said...

I really like the shot of the harrier flying with the geese! Nice pictures Mary.

Mary C said...

Thanks, Ruthie! Glad you like them.

 

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