Showing posts with label mallard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mallard. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

New Mexico vacation

ANNOUNCEMENT

In the past two weeks I have been spammed to the point of annoyance. I have chosen, for now, to allow only blogger members of my blog to be allowed to leave comments. I apologize for this inconvenience. If you are not a blogger member and want to leave a comment you can contact me via email: marycarlson10@gmail.com.

NOW ON TO MY VACATION!

This year the annual Festival of the Cranes held at Bosque del Apache was November 17-22. My husband, Dave, and I flew from San Jose into Albuquerque on Monday, Nov 16. We arrived shortly after 11 a.m., but our baggage "missed the flight." It was a good thing that we had a few hours to spare; we had a long drive ahead of us to get to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. So after filling out a missing baggage report we picked up our rental car and headed over to the Rio Grande Nature Center to see some wildlife, mostly birds, and wait for the airlines to call us about our bags. We were there less than an hour when we got the call, and so we headed back to the airport to pick up our luggage. Meanwhile, here are some photos of what we saw at the Nature Center.

As it is most everywhere else in the country and Canada there is an abundance of Canada Geese.

And there seems to be an abundance of mallards, too.
On the path/trail to the visitor center there is a bird feeder where many passerines catch a bite to eat, including Mourning Doves.
There are several white-winged doves that visit the feeder, too. At quick glance they look like mourning doves, but the white edging on their wings catches our attention. Then if you look closer you can tell the color of their eyes are different -- they have red eyes. And an even closer look you can see the dove has a dark malar spot and lacks the black spots on its back.

My next post will be Elephant Butte Lake State Park. That was our first event we attended for the Festival of the Cranes.

 

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