Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Finally, I get to be sixty.
Seems like a long time coming. I got to do anything I wanted today, and Judy had to be nice to me all day. We left Faywood and headed north to San Antonio, New Mexico. Birdwatcher’s
RV Park, just outside Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. I got to
spend the afternoon with ten thousand sandhill cranes and thirty thousand
snow geese. A very noisy settling down for the evening. Altogether, thirty
different birds today. The hooded merganser was special. Peregrine falcon,
and more of my gambel’s quail. A marsh wren. A spotted towhee. A good day.
Faywood
A tough decision, not going to get the Montezuma quail, but a good decision.
We would have been pressed for time, going all the way down into West Texas,
then back to Northern New Mexico for our client by Wednesday. We don’t want
to hurry from place to place, we want to take our time. We’re here at
Faywood Hot Springs, taking our time. Taking our time, and counting birds.
This is a very birdy place, here, and nearby City of Rocks State Park. Kestrel, gambel’s quail, white winged and mourning doves, roadrunner, ladder
backed woodpecker, loggerhead shrike, raven, verdin, rock bewick’s and house
wrens, ruby crowned kinglet, curve billed and crissal thrashers, green
tailed and canyon towhees, chipping black- throated song and white crowned
sparrows, dark eyed junco, house finch, and house sparrow. It’s a very busy place.
Faywood
The sunsets here are so much more sedate.
Faywood
South from Albuquerque to Las Cruces. There, at lunch, a difficult
decision. Continue southeast to Davis Mountains State Park in Texas for a
long day and the Montezuma quail, or hang a right for an early stop at
Faywood Hot Springs. We went right. Sixty-degree air. Hundred six-degree
pools. It was a good afternoon. The campground here is a little tight for us. We might not have come in if
we had scouted it first in the Jeep. We made it in without adding any marks
to the outside of the rig though, and I feel safe now until it’s time to
move it to leave. Not many raptors today. We did get to see some nice flocks of sandhill
cranes in the air, and a few on the ground. White crowned sparrows, house
finches, white-winged doves, curve billed thrashers, and road runners. I learned more about those fakey trees at the top of Monument Hill. Termini
tells me they’re called Frankenpine. Cellphone towers camouflaged as trees.
Yeah. Right. Can hardly tell them from the real thing. I’m pleased to report that I also got a rise out of him with my smart aleck
comment about the Buffalo Bills. Termini happens to live in Buffalo.
Albuquerque
Then, it’s back to the land of the high desert sunsets.