First Day of Festival

The workshops today were exciting, and one of the most popular ones is Sandhill Crane Behavior. This year the workshop is led byPaul Tebbel and Keanna Leonard. There were 17 registered for the class, and we learned common vocalizations, body language and other characteristics of sandhill cranes. We learned how to recognize juveniles, tell subspecies apart, distinguish between dancing and aggression and many other details. For me, Sandhill Cranes are one of the most fascinating birds with their roots going back to the Eocene, some 40 million years ago. Seeing them at their winter home at the Refuge and learning about them is exciting! At first light we listened to the cranes on their roosting spots, identifying vocalizations and other behaviors. We then went to the classroom for breakfast and viewed many behaviors on film before traveling to different locations on the Refuge to watch and interpret crane interactions. It was a great morning!

Festival goers are always excited about and quickly fill the workshop Digital Photography with Long Lenses conducted by Jerry Goffe and co-instructors It is a fabulous 3-day experience on wildlife and nature photography- sunrise and sunset photographing sandhill cranes, geese, other animals and landscapes of the Refuge. Jerry is a great and knowledgeable guy and his co-instructors are so helpful and are professional photographers as well.

Deadly Beauty Behavior, a fascinating class with Matt Mitchell and his trained hawks and falcon takes you out on in the open country on the other side of the Rio Grande and gives you a wonderful opportunity to learn and see a variety of behaviors and also to photograph these birds in action. I took this class a few years ago and found it quite exciting. I'll look for one of the photographs (of his Harris Hawk) and post it when I get a chance.

I took the Land, Sea and Air trip in 2006 with Steve Green at Elephant Butte Lake, and it was a fun experience filled with grebes. I haven't heard this year how the birding was, but the weather is fantastic, and sea birds, diving ducks, cormorants, grebes, white pelicans and more should be around, and the the dramatic geological setting at the lake is worth seeing.