Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge  (page 5)

Specific conditions for the winter of 2011-2012

We heard ahead of this December 2011 trip that due to drought conditions in the southwest many of the surrounding farms had crop failures, including some around the preserve. To help make the best of the situation preserve folks opened up an additional road loop to the north to get access to some additional farm fields that faired better, with the expectation that the cranes and geese would likely also be grazing during the day. This road was supposed to be open through the weekend of our visit. But after arriving and making a stop at the visitor center we learned that due to a winter storm that passed through the area the previous week, the road was shut down early due to snow and mud.

Due to the shortage of food for the birds as a result of the crop failures, the preserve was spreading corn on an open field area at the north end of the Farm loop. We realized the significance of this after traveling through the south marsh loop and up past many of the observation decks on the northern loop and noticing a significant lack of birds as compared to the last time I was here two years before. As a result, most of the birds were concentrated at this open area just a few hundred yards west of the Farm Deck at the north end of the loop. This made it easier to find the geese and cranes, but resulted in less diversity in the opportunities in which to photograph them.

One other challenge encountered with this trip was the more extreme cold, measuring as low as 7 degrees fahrenheit on the first morning there. That resulted in most of the ponds freezing up, and thus limiting the roosting locations. The area to the north-east of the Flight deck that appears to have some water pumped in to the preserve is sufficiently warm to keep the water thawed out there. As a result, on this trip for the first few days most of the birds were concentrated in this area for the evening roost. For morning photography, this resulted in some nice backlighting with the sunrise coming through the rising mist from the water with a high density of birds in the closer foreground. However, from this location photography is more distant, necessitating the need for my 1.4x teleconverter on top of my 500mm lens and a 1.6x crop factor camera body. Having enough light was challenging. With my Canon 50D I try to keep to ISO at 800 or below to keep the noise within reasonable levels, and depending on your big lens panning and tracking skills I would try to keep the shutter speed above 1/100th of a second and more ideally 1/1000th of a second to better freeze the entire action. Thus use of the teleconverter will be dependent on how much light you have and what type of image you are trying to capture. .