Hi friends,

I'm about to leave Bosque del Apache NWR after an amazing 12
days ('Woods of the Apache' -- in the Rio Grande valley of south
central New Mexico). Winter home to around 10,000 Sandhill Cranes,
20,000 Snow Geese, and 40,000 ducks, as well as many other birds
and animals. This is one of the major 'flyway stopovers' of the
country, and people visit from all over the world. Both the cranes
and geese congregate to spend the night in a concentrated area
of ponds and marshes (so the coyotes and bobcats can't get them)
and the little gravel tour loop lets you drive to be quite close to
them. At dawn and dusk you are surrounded by tens of thousands of
big birds, flocking close overhead, and with dozens of strings of birds
visible in the sky as they return from their day's feeding. (In some of
the pictures, what looks like dirt smudges on your computer screen, is
really string after string of birds homing in.) And many of them are
calling, rather haunting sounds, and you really feel in the middle of it
all. The cranes are especially beautiful and impressive in flight; their
8-foot wingspan, with splayed feathers at the wingtips, and their red-
capped head thrust way out ahead and their long legs trailing
behind, creates a stunning picture of power and grace. I've been
enjoying, after satiating my photography urge, just panning along
with the flocks through my spotting scope, so it's a bit like I am flying
with the birds perhaps 10 or 20 feet away, sort of a home grown
'Winged Migration'.   I've found this time here one of the most
amazing experiences I've ever had. It's so great that EV is going to
fly here for a long weekend in February with me. After that I'll
probably swing through southern Arizona and California.

I've managed to get some nice photographs of both the flocks and
of individual birds, but I've thrown away a lot more than I've kept.
There are many real 'pro birders' visiting here with the right sort of
photo gear for really professional results. Shooting through my
spotting scope produces perhaps 1 usable picture in 50 whereas I
expect they can count of good results most of time. And my
'digiscoping' is too clumsy and slow for moving shots entirely.  I
thought maybe I should consider a rig like theirs, until I learned that
one of the most popular lenses, a Canon 600mm f/4, costs $9600!
Makes my $800 spotting scope seem cheap. And then you need
another few grand for camera bodies. 

I met a very nice guy with such a rig from Nebraska; he's been to
Alaska or the Northwest Territory eight or nine times photographing
birds and animals, so we had plenty to talk about. He sells his
pictures to magazines, and says he's paid for the big Canon several
times over during the past 15 years. He's stated me thinking! He's
found Bosque del Apache much better for photographing the
cranes than their other great gathering place, the Platte River in his
home state Nebraska in the spring; he says here, you are closer to
them and have better light.

The weather here in the winter is very often clear and sunny, great
for photographing the miscellaneous ducks and songbirds along the
tour loop. Once while I was watching a snow goose which was
foraging in a deep ditch, a huge lanky racoon trotted out of the
woods, down the ditch bank and swam across, up the other side,
and crossed the road near me with hardly a glance in my direction.
Unfortunately, much too quick for a picture. Several times when I've
been stopped to watch waterfowl, more experienced birders have
stopped and asked me "What's that over there"   a hawk or eagle
that I'd not even noticed -- and I'm starting to learn from them to
keep a better watch for the less obvious. There's a real knack to it.

The nearby town of Socorro is flooded with WiFi hotspots, some of
them apparently using the faster 'g' mode rather than the 'b' which
I can use; my excellent little Hawking WiFi finder picks these up as I
drive along, but until I try them on my laptop I don't know if they will
be useful. And some of the sites want a password (which I haven't
paid for), some are blocked except to their authorized users (not
me) and some are encrypted (and I don't have the key)   all this is
the way it should be, but not good for me. But so far I've always
found at least one site which is wide open; in Socorro I can park
outside Days Inn and have excellent up and download speed and
no blocking of email sending. It's pretty handy. My 200mw card and
external antenna seems to work very well.

Going back a few months, after my return from Alaska I visited the
Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, and enjoyed the lush rain
forest atmosphere there in contrast to the arctic tundra of the far
north. The accompanying slideshow starts with a few pictures from
there.

After a short while at my brother Lee's in Cedaredge, I spent several
days with my sailing friends Ed and Mary Arnold, on the Hole in the
Rock road in southern Utah. This is a 60 mile gravel road which dead-
ends overlooking the Colorado River (now Lake Powell) where in
1880 the Mormon settlers lowered their wagons hundreds of feet
down a very steep narrow crack to ferry the river. Little did they
know that making it down the 'hole in the rock' was actually easier
than what they had to traverse on the other side of the river. This
expedition was one of the great epics of western exploration, 250
settlers with wagons and stock, six months (expected to take 6
weeks) across some of the wildest unexplored land in the country, in
the middle of a severe winter, over terrain much of which even a
jeep can't traverse. Today the graded road follows their track on the
north (easy) side of the river, and it makes a very scenic and
historically interesting expedition. Along way one can take a half
day hike through two little slot canyons, Peek-a-Boo and Spooky,
and I've put a few pictures from Peek-a-Boo in the slideshow.

The address for the slideshow is as before: 

http://www.firestardesign.com/johna. 

Click on 04BOSQUE.exe, and if using Internet Explorer you can either
choose OPEN to view the show once, of choose SAVE TO DISK if you
want to have it your hard disk for future re-viewing. I have used my
updated Norton AntiVirus to be sure the file is virus free.

Right-Click or Spacebar will advance to the next picture
Left-Click will return to the previous picture
Pause will pause the show
Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc when you reach the last
image ('Sandhills') if the show seems 'stuck'

If you don't have a broadband Internet connection it's not realistic
to download these large files   please let me know, as it is very easy
for me to send them to you on a CD.

Regards, John Armitage