Photographing the Birds of Bosque:

Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes

The Snow Geese

Now the sky has brightened considerably, and you begin to see the flocks on the water. If you've photographed here before, you realize there are a couple key questions to ask: What will the sky be like today at sunrise? And where in the vast impoundments are the birds today?

And where are the birds this morning? They have their favorite spots (supposedly), but they’re easily set off -- by coyotes, owls, eagles, the wind, the goose at the edge of the flock that thinks it saw a coyote and takes of and takes ten thousand geese with it, moving and circling until the threat, real or imagined, is gone. The farm fields are to the north; when the sun is high enough, that’s where they'll go. Meanwhile, they oscillate around the impoundments like some quantum mechanical "particle in a box": you’re never quite sure where they’re going, at best you can speak of probabilities. Nature’s wave function.

As a photographer, what you hope is that they'll come close when the light is good. And many mornings they oblige. There are always a few cooperative individuals. Sometimes you get a cooperative group of twenty thousand. Then you shoot with everything from your widest wide angle to your biggest telephoto. If the sky is crimson or orange you have a beautiful background for gorgeous silhouettes of birds and mountains. Sometimes thousands will fly directly overhead. Don’t forget to wear a hat.

Eventually, most will head north to feed, so your best chances can come when they have settled in a little south. Like all birds, they will take off at first into the wind. Sometimes, they trickle out in small groups of a dozen or so. Sometimes they wait until some unseen spark, as if in gasoline, ignites them in a single mad dash. Have all your equipment and extra film (or memory cards) ready and nearby. (At Bosque, this is particularly easy to do: the best photography is right along the 12 mile auto tour loop, so you’re never far from your vehicle.)

The Sandhill Cranes stand four feet tall, and wings at full spread span over six feet. Their bugling calls, heard from miles away, constantly punctuate the air at Bosque. In the past they roosted for the most part in inaccessible areas of the refuge, but in recent years they have begun favoring pools right along the highway to the refuge entrance. They are a beautiful sight before dawn, massed in shallow pools. Hopefully your fellow photographers won’t try to get too close and thereby push them back. But these cranes are becoming somewhat comfortable with being the center of attention.

The cranes often leave early; if it’s too early, the sun hasn't risen and the light is not ideal. If they linger but the eastern sky is clear, the light soon turns harsh. Here you’re facing west with the sunrise behind you. Like most of nature photography, your chances of spectacular shots improve with the number of days you can devote to the undertaking, patiently pursuing the perfect alignment of weather, light, and subject. When that happens and you capture it on film, all the "wasted" days are suddenly worth it.

Like the Snow Geese, the Sandhill Cranes take off into the wind; their large size seems to make this even more of an imperative. If you watch closely, you'll notice that individuals telegraph their intention to take flight by craning their necks and pointing their bills and bodies into the wind. Because of their size, they must run some distance to become airborne (geese explode off the water); this can lead to some great action sequences.