Bosque del Apache Sunrise

When we were deciding where to go for our week in New Mexico, someone suggested a visit to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It's a large refuge about an hour south of Albuquerque and a spot where thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese overwinter. Because of times we've seen cranes in this area and in Alberta, where they were just setting out on their migration south, I was intrigued.

It was too late in the spring to see cranes at the Bosque, but we enjoyed two early morning visits, listening to the pre-dawn calls of blackbirds, boat-tailed grackles, coots, and bullfrogs, watching egrets and herons wing by overhead, and admiring the slowly changing colors of dawn over the marsh and on the mountains to the west. And then at sunrise, hundreds of swifts (or perhaps swallows) silently swooped into the air, creating a vast aerial ballet over our heads.

All those little specks in the sky (and reflected in the water) were part of the dawn aerial ballet.