Last Hurrah at the Bosque del Apache

The traffic jam on the Marsh Loop reminded me of bison sightings at Yellowstone. Cars were parked in the middle of the road, heads hung out of car windows and a photographer peered through his huge camouflage-colored lens. I pulled over to the shoulder and got out of my vehicle. On the edge of the road near the photographer were a group of Snow Geese foraging in the grass, completely undeterred by the onlookers.

Knowing that the geese and Sandhill Cranes would begin migrating north in the next few days, my daughter and I decided to spend the day at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. The sun shone brightly and temperatures were mild for February. The golden hued winter grasses glowed and the azure pond waters sparkled.

Our first surprise was the sighting of an Eastern Phoebe as we sat eating our lunch. I had just pointed out to Breanne the identifying marks of a Say’s Phoebe. “There’s a bird that looks similar, but its chest is white,” Breanne commented.

“It must be the way the light is shining on it,” I dismissed her. Then I put down my lunch and focused my binoculars.

“You have good observation skills,” I told her as I flipped through my field guide to the Eastern Phoebe which I knew had been sighted at the refuge.

Two Tree Swallows flew across the road. I thought I might have been mistaken until I chatted with another birder who also had seen them. “They are early migrators,” he told me. I remembered seeing them beginning to nest at a park in Seattle in mid March.

As we passed the ponds we saw the various ducks that make the refuge their winter home: Coots, Gadwalls, Northern Pintails, Lesser Scaups, Green-winged Teals, Mallards and Cinnamon Teals.

There were five or six Neotropic Cormorants sunning themselves on a low snag in the pond by the boardwalk. With the exception of a couple of Northern Shovelers trolling the far end of the pond, there were no other waterfowl.

We stopped at the end of the Marsh Loop to enjoy a hike along the Rio Viejo Trail, something I had not done before. On all of my previous winter visits, the weather was frigid and we always were anxious to get back into the car after our stops to study the birds. The 1.7 mile trail wound through a variety of native vegetation which was alive with birds. White-crowned Sparrows nibbled on dried seeds. The flash of white tail feathers let us know when juncos were present. Yellow-rumped Warblers ‘chitted’ as they worked the upper story of the Rio Grande Cottonwood trees. An occasional Ruby-crowned Kinglet with its white eye-ring giving it a wide-eyed look let us know its presence with its ‘chatter.’

As I crossed the bridge to the Chupadera Deck along the Farm Loop, I heard a sharp chit. I recognized it as the call note of a Winter Wren. In November I had chased it around a corner of the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge before I could get a look at it. I patiently focused my binoculars on the underbrush alongside the ditch bank. Before long it hopped onto a branch within view and I was able to confirm the identification.

At the end of the road there was a group of birders standing with their scopes focused north. I quickly parked the car and walked over to see what they were watching. It was a continuing education class from New Mexico State University and they were watching two Bianchi Pheasants, a sub-species of the Ring-necked Pheasant.

We walked to the Norton Blind where we saw a large group of Long-billed Dowitchers, large shorebirds, cruising through the shallow water, pecking in the mud as they traveled. A Ferruginous Hawk kept circling about, the feather of its white undersides gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

When we reached the Flight Deck, it was only 5 PM. While most of the cranes and geese would not be flying in for an hour, two Bald Eagles kept watch from their perch on a tall snag at the end of the pond. All we could see of the waterfowl was a mass of ‘duck butts,’ as they fed.

As we headed home we both agreed that a trip to the Bosque del Apache is always a treat!

Don’t Forget: Lessons From the Gulf Coast

A victim of Katrina implored, “Don’t let people forget.”

During Albuquerque’s record-breaking winter storm over New Year’s weekend, when almost 20 inches of snow kept most of us housebound for a few days, I thought about this woman’s plea and our reluctance to prepare for emergencies.

When I lived in Seattle, we constantly were warned about the eminent ‘big one.’ The office where I worked had emergency supplies and a plan to respond to the people with disabilities we served. I had emergency provisions in my car, and food and water stock-piled at home. When I moved to Albuquerque, my guard went down. This was not an area that was prone to disasters.

Mother Nature rattled our cages this past summer with hundred-year rains that forced some residents to evacuate, and a record snowfall this winter that prevented many of us from leaving our homes and stranded hundreds of travelers.

How many of us are prepared for the unexpected?

According to a study conducted at shelters in Houston following Hurricane Katrina, the major reason people did not evacuate early was because they did not think the storm was going to be as powerful as it was.

Researchers from the Universities of Kansas and New Mexico surveyed people with disabilities in the Gulf States who were impacted by Katrina. In their final report, they quoted one of the respondents as saying, “We stayed because it never had been that bad before. We never thought the water would rise like that. It caught us off guard. We were pretty much going by the seat of our pants.”

Amanda Ripley, writing in Time Magazine, August 20, 2006, discussed why people don’t prepare. She states, “Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just smacked them across the face.”

A week after New Mexico’s major snow storm, an article in the Albuquerque Journal advised people “to make like boy Scouts and be prepared.”

Yet I wonder how many people heeded the advice.

Ripley continued in her article, “In the 12 months since Katrina, the rest of the U.S. has not proved to be a quicker study than the Gulf Coast.”

According to the director of emergency management in King County, Washington, quoted in Ripley’s article, “There are four stages of denial. One, it won’t happen. Two, if it does happen, it won’t happen to me. Three, it won’t be that bad if it does happen to me. And four, if it happens to me and it’s bad, there’s nothing I can do to stop it anyway.”

The mechanics of emergency preparedness are pretty straight forward: stocking up on water and nonperishable food, and having a first aid kit, a flashlight and batteries. However, our planning needs to extend beyond ourselves. Are there people or pets in our household who need special consideration? Are there neighbors who might need assistance? What are the plans if family members are separated when a disaster happens?

As I ventured from my home a couple of days after the snow storm, I noticed the icy foot prints of an elderly neighbor where she had gone to retrieve her mail. It would have been easy for her to slip, and I knew I needed to shovel a safe path for her. Another neighbor and I, who occasionally chatted as we walked our dogs, decided it was important to exchange phone numbers.

Unfortunately, the open house I had planned to enable our street’s older, single women to connect with each other had to be cancelled because of the snow storm. However, I realize now that it is more important than ever.

One of the haunting memories of Katrina was the news about a woman who died in her wheelchair outside of the Convention Center. Another woman who talked with the disability researchers said, “I heard gurgling water…I made it to the wheelchair…Then I went down under the water three times. I called 911 on the cell phone and the operator told me to get up as high as I could get. But I told her, ‘Miss, I can’t get me any higher’…”

Did these individuals have support systems? Where were their friends and neighbors?

Jeff Opdyke, writing in the Wall Street Journal Sunday, shared the story of a family friend who had to evacuate during last summer’s East Coast floods. “What was so invaluable,” she said, “were all these relationships I had established long before the crisis hit.”

Opdyke continued, “Sometimes I now see, the numbers in your checkbook aren’t nearly as important as the numbers in your address book.”

It is not ‘if’ we will be confronted with a situation that upsets our world, but ‘when.’ Will I have taken personal emergency planning seriously, and more importantly, will I have expanded and nurtured the relationships in my neighborhood that will assure that we all make it through together.