Yesterday, Margie and I went to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, south of Socorro, NM. This refuge hosts a series of canals branching off of the Rio Grande river, and it makes an excellent habitat for thousands of migratory birds. I’m not sure how they calculate this, but officials at the refuge calculated that there were over 41,000 snow geese, 10,000 sandhill cranes, and over 31,000 ducks on the refuge. As you will see from the pictures below, I certainly believe the numbers of snow geese!  There has also been a handful of bald eagles spotted on the refuge, but unfortunately the two that Margie and I saw were out of our range for any resolvable pictures. This whole outing was another harsh lesson in photography for me with poor results overall, but I was able to catch a few shots worth sharing.

The next several shots were taking in series as a huge flock of snow geese began to move to their roosting ponds in the late afternoon.

I then zoomed out to gain some perspective on the scene, almost like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

The flocks swarmed back and forth from pond to pond before finally settling down to “roost” for the evening.

A flash gallery of these and additional images can be viewed at this link.