Monday, February 7, 2011 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Impaled, Sandhill Crane, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 6, 2011

Discovery

Instead of walking down to the first pond where the cranes roost, this morning I drove down so I could shoot with my tripod without carrying it the mile down and mile back. In the end, a fortunate bit of laziness perhaps - I might not have gotten sharp enough shots to identify the can the crane was dealing with without that tripod. Who knows.

Anyway, I set up and was taking crane shots in the strong early morning sunlight. It was a joy to be out after last weeks weather.

When I was framing this shot, in the viewfinder I saw this extra patch of red that seemed to be in the background - a surveyors ribbon on a weed maybe. So I took the shot(s) and moved the camera a few feet to try another angle. But the red spot stayed in the same relation to the bird. That's odd. I took a few more shots and moved again. Same spot. How odd - what could I be seeing? I shot a few more shots.

I couldn't see much in the bright daylight when I tried to look at the shots on the camera screen so I walked back to the rig to look at them inside where the light was less intense. I still couldn't see just what the red spot was but it looked sort of like a bloody skewered bird stuck on the cranes beak. Do cranes skewer small birds? I doubt it but what am I seeing?

Back out I went to get a few more pictures. By now the bird has left it's stationary pose and moved into the crowd and I got a few shots like the one I posted yesterday.

It wasn't until I downloaded the pictures later that I realized what I was seeing.

Yikes!

I cropped a couple pictures, loaded them on my iPod touch and headed for the visitor center to see what, if anything, they might want to do. I didn't know if they took an active approach to such things or maybe a let-nature-take-it's-course approach but I thought they at least should know about this bird's plight.

By now it's mid day on Superbowl Sunday and I didn't think much could or would be done but they got right on it and the ranger on duty came up to the pond with me to see if we could locate the bird or walk the area and see if he could find the can. No luck - the birds had moved on for the day and waders that fit him were locked away in the storeroom for the weekend.

He thought it likely the bird could kick the can free but just in case something needs to be done the plan is to have people at the roost this morning to assess the situation. Like I mentioned yesterday, they can't intervene until the bird is weak enough to be netted so the delay should not be a problem.

If you'll excuse me I need get my act together and head for the roost.

No news is good news

No crane sporting a can showed up at the roost this morning. Let's hope that is good news; we'll probably never know for sure.

Pictures available

Here are larger versions of this picture and two others to download and distribute in any way you see fit under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License:

• Sandhill Crane with Can 235, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 6, 2011 2400 x 1800 px - 3.2MB
• Sandhill Crane with Can 265, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 6, 2011 2400 x 1800 px - 2.8MB
• Sandhill Crane with Can 274, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 6, 2011 2400 x 1800 px - 2.4MB

Night camp

Site 10 - 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