SPRING!

Yeah, no, sorry, not yet. Just thought maybe this would be a good time to remind us all what spring can (and will) be. We spend a fair amount of time at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, mostly in winter when the thousands of sandhill cranes and tens of thousands of snow geese make compelling targets for stories and camera work. Lots of photographers and other interested and or curious folks crowd the expected hot spots. All worth it.

Then there is spring, green and warm with a whole different cast of characters and a whole lot fewer people. Late April into early May brings egrets, ibis, flycatchers, massive numbers of swallows and others to the greening Bosque and shallow playa ponds.

Spring sun brings a different kind of light, morning and evening golden hours, of course but a midday brightness that is palpable with its heat, warning of summer. Willows that, in the low winter light could turn into brilliant red fireworks, branches blazing toward the sky now turn to soft hazy green.

The egrets, Great, Cattle and Snowy as well as the White-faced Ibis feast on crayfish and salamander larva in the shallow playa ponds. They catch so many crayfish, I can imagine, under the murky water, with the emerging bright green cattails and rushes, the muddy bottoms must simply seeth with wall to wall crayfish, foraging, mating and feeding the thronging egrets, feet dabbling in the mud bottom, creatures of the air above. Black-crowned Night herons hang out at the edges of the shallows while the Great Blue and Green patrol the deeper, more permanent water, the ditches and ponds that have populations of fish to hunt. Black-chinned Hummingbirds visit cactus blooms and flash through greening bushes catching the now burgeoning tiny insects they feast on.

The water here is extensively managed, the flooding Rio Grande river no longer spreads beyond its banks in spring, the very reason the Bosque exists, gallery forests of Cottonwood extending along and beyond the river. Humans move water from one area to another, farm for crops, the refuge for the wildlife that depends on the seasonal flooding and drying of the shallow impoundments that mimic the ages old flood cycle. Not enough snow these days in Colorado at the headwaters of the Rio, too much water removed from the river for irrigation. The now classic western dilemma, not enough water in the river. But you came for spring and spring we shall have. The birds tend to be the stars of the spring show but there is much more going on.

This could go on and on but you get the idea, spring, where or when it happens, bids us slow down and take in the wonders around us.