Frozen Feathers

Image credit: Laura Hubers/USFWS

Frozen Feathers

I spent a week in the desert. Most of it was spent in remote Trans-Pecos Texas down to the Rio Grande River and Big Bend National Park. The middle of the week was full of rich experiences, from getting stuck in quicksand while pursuing black-throated sparrows to basking in natural hot tubs at Terlingua Springs with temperatures in the 80s, but that is fodder for another tale. What I want to talk about is the bookending of this trip with the first and last days on the High Plains of New Mexico on my way out and back to my point of embarkation at Albuquerque. These bookends were a stark contrast to the middle of the week mostly because the average temperature rose 60-70 degrees once I was in the Big Bend wilderness. The other defining point of these two days is that they were full of feathers: a lot of feathers.

I had planned to scale a fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park a month earlier but had to reschedule and relocate my trip to a later date and a more southern clime when President Bush closed the National Parks to force a budget deal in 1990. When I first arrived in Albuquerque to make my way off the plateau and into the Rio Grande Valley, I had planned to only eat the food I had brought with me in my backpack. As I moved across the landscape South of Socorro, it was cold and blowing a good deal of snow. With temperatures in the 20s and a steady wind driving the wind chill down into the teens, the first thing I did was stop to find some beans, tortillas, and oranges to add to my limited larder.

I was able to make it across El Mal Pais to Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge before dark and learned from postings at a kiosk that 70,000 snow geese were presently bedding down at the lake. I resolved to return early the next morning when I could get into the refuge. After a bitter frosty night (14 degrees) nestled in a canyon away from the wind, and serenaded by great horned owls on the rim, I awoke before dawn and made my way back to the refuge. I found myself on a rise west of the lake and facing low, snow-dusted hills in the east. The sky was beginning to lighten with the rising sun. Suddenly, the first ray of sunshine streaked over the far ridge. Simultaneously, on cue with the beam of light, 70,000 snow geese took flight. I know you will think I am exaggerating, but it really is true. Within a very short time, the entire cohort of big and brilliantly white snow geese took to the air. Now you will really think I am lying when I tell you that as I stood there with my mouth open (not a smart idea with thousands of geese overhead), the only thing I can compare to the sound that saturated my ears is the sound of a jet aircraft as it takes off. The proof that I was not exaggerating came ten years later. I picked up an aircraft magazine from the back of the seat and read a travel article where another person described that same phenomenon and that same sound the same way…jetwash from an airliner.

Towards the end of the trip, I made it back to the High Plains by way of the Copper Mountains to Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife. After surviving an even colder night (12 degrees F) thanks to a couple of wool blankets I had picked up earlier, I awoke on a levee to the sound of milling sandhill cranes. It was a very foggy December dawn, and I could see no birds. I belly crawled eastward through a thick copse of young cottonwoods toward the sound of the cranes. Presently, dancing crane legs began to form before my eyes through the fog. The most amazing thing is that the fog bank was thick and still very near the ground. Because of that, I could not make out the bodies of the cranes. The effect was of a forest of disembodied legs, jostling about. The misty atmosphere gave depth to the view because some of the legs pranced quite near and relatively clearly, while rank after rank of legs faded into the distance with increasing ghostly gray tones. I did not have my camera with me, but that phenomenal spectacle still lives in my memory. I remained there on the frozen ground for quite some time, mesmerized by this unique opportunity to be among 100s of cranes. Because of the site conditions, there is no way to even estimate how many birds were in this flock, but that did not matter. Never before or since have I experienced sandhill cranes in this way.

It is only because of careful conservation practices over the last century that it is still possible

today for you to experience large flocks of geese or cranes. Go out. Explore. Make your own

‘Cranial Kodak’ moments!

Mark Ray has always been fascinated with living things. He would beg his parents to take him to a little zoo perched on a hillside in West Virginia when he was just a toddler.  Later, like many third graders, he wanted to be a paleontologist.  Later still, he became an ecologist and started a career in habitat restoration.  His biophilia knows no bounds from microbes to mastodons.  Plants and birds are two areas he has focused on a good deal as part of habitat creation and quality monitoring.  His birding supercharged from childhood backyard feeder watching to several places around the world when he took an Advanced Ornithology class after college. 

http://rayeallc.com/