The highlight of most mornings in the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge is when tens of thousands of snow geese blast off from the big pond. Actually there are two blast events: The first is before sunrise from the pond where they spent the night. Thousands of geese take off at once silhouetted against the first streaks of orange and purple sky. The timing is such that you can take photos of this event and then make it to the next staging area where MORNING GLORY was captured. The second-stage pond is where hundreds of sandhill cranes have spent the night. The geese from first pond join them and together they spend an hour or so milling about, resting, and preening. Once the sun clears the distant mountains, the cranes begin leaving one at a time and in small groups. They’ll spread out their departure this way over a couple hours. The geese on the other hand are unpredictable. You know they’re going to launch, en masse, but you never know when and no one knows what prompts them. It’s always after sunrise but it can happen right away or it can take a couple hours. So you have to keep alert. You might get advance warning and hear them begin to chatter in anticipation – gives you a chance to pick your area, like this cotton wood tree. But quite often you just hear the cacophony of thirty thousand wings beating as they explode off the water. It’s great drama in the desert.
