Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge  (page 4)

Refuge overview (part 2 of 2)

At the northwest corner of the Farm loop you will find the Flight deck and an additional parking area about a hundred yards further up the road to the north. Getting to this location from the kiosk is a two-way road, so you can reach this area either directly to the left from the kiosk or via the long way around the Farm loop road. Depending on the water conditions, this can be a spot where the cranes, geese, and ducks will roost for the night. You will want to do some checking around before by either asking others, checking at the entrance kiosk, or at the visitors center to find out if birds are roosting here. If so, you will want to be in position about 15 minutes before sunset to capture the Sandhill Crane fly-in, as they tend to come in first, typically in groups of 2 to 8. Ducks will come in next in similar smaller groups, with the geese coming in last, typically in very large waves that can number in the hundreds or thousands. The challenge with the geese evening fly-in is that it typically happens well after sunset when there is no longer sufficient light to photograph them without blurring.

The other location that the cranes and geese will roost for the night is back outside the park on the west side of the paved road to San Antonio about 2 miles north of the visitors center. There are a series of ponds here adjacent to the road with plenty of parking. This is an easier location for bird photography as you can get within a closer distance to where they roost. One challenge is determining the best position to be to photograph them in the morning for their lift-off. The geese can burst out from the water for the morning take-off with relatively little warning. Sometime you can hear a cacophony of honking noises just prior to this breathtaking event. I find it best to use my 100-400mm lens (Canon) for this situation so you can better take-in larger portions of the activity, quickly zooming out as the mass of birds increases. It helps to have a second body for this relatively smaller lens setup for situations like this. Try capturing the lift-off from the leading birds in order to add some structure to the composition. For the Sandhill Cranes, they tend to take-off into the wind. So if you want to capture them with the snow capped mountains in the background, first determine where the largest groups of cranes are roosting, the wind direction, and then position yourself such that the birds after about a hundred foot run upwind from their current location will be situated with the background you want.