Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Coming to Roost, Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 26, 2010

I like this silhouette enough to put a larger copy over at my Birds Series of photos.

The new camera I ordered yesterday, a Canon EOS 7D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-inch LCD and 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens, arrived from Amazon this afternoon and I managed to get a battery charged and learn enough about the camera to go off with Kate & Terry on a sunset photo shoot at the Bosque.

This is one of the few keepers I got out of about 150 shots. Trying to capture the wonderful birds here at the Bosque has made me so aware of the limitations of my old Panasonic DMC-FZ28 that I've been concentrating so much on learning to manually control my camera that I've been taking way to many poorly thought out "oh, look, a bird!" pictures. The DMC-FZ28 is a great little point & shoot camera but it just isn't up to shooting birds in low light. It will be nice to get enough control of this new beast that I can pay more attention to what I'm shooting than to the camera.

Facing South, Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 26, 2010

Why do the cranes so often face southward at the evening roost?

Night camp

Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM

This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
Click for Google street view
Check the weather in San Antonio NM

Crayfish Chimney

Late one afternoon I sat upon my camera case beside the path where it wound through the darkest part of the woods, down near the pond, and watched a crayfish building his "chimney," the land entrance to his underwater tunnel. He had just started to work above the ground when I first arrived. He came up through the moist black earth, carrying a ball of it between his two enormous fighting claws. Using the claws as hands, he spread the soil around the hole to form the base of the chimney. He then backed down the hole and after several minutes came up with another armful.

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