Steve and Judy's Travels!

The Montezuma Quail remains the target bird. We’re just not moving in the
direction of the target. We’ve moved north to Las Vegas, New Mexico. We
got here by back roads, rolling down the two-lanes. No traffic. We found
Highway 60 across New Mexico is a lot like Highway 50 across Nevada. Maybe
the “loneliest road in New Mexico.” This week’s target, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Las Vegas. Next week’s
target, the Montezuma Quail.

The Faywood quail.

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.

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.

The sunsets here are so much more sedate.