sleep

this nest box contains a westen screech owl, a smaller versioon of the great horned owls often see in the Bosque. In areas with heavy raven activity, a nest box or tree cavity can give prtection from the racous black mobs of corvids.

there is an unusual amount of rabbit scat out on the trails, widely scattered.

there is something pretty magical about greeting the sunrise. It gets easier to do as the sunrise returns to a more reasonable hour!

the birdsong in the mornings is getting pretty enthusiastic with that sunrise. especially the morning we had a dusting of snow.

I believe this is a cinnamon teal. Birders like this guy, apparently. He has strikingly beautiful colors; a red eye, and a pale blue stripe on the wing instead of the more common green. I still can't find the american woodcock, and i really enjoy the looking.

this little guy was eating young grass shoots in the morning sun. He's a muskrat, and his tunnels in the ditch bank give many other animals a safe refuge from overhead raptors. The Nature conservancy website for the Corrales refuge says we have the highest density of Coopers hawks in the world.

it took a long time to see this guy properly. He's obvious once we were able to get a long range photo, but we spent a lot of time trying to figure out if he was a hawk or a porcupine!