There are loads of birds that spend the winter at the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge, but the two main attractions that bring almost equal numbers of birders there are the Sandhill Cranes and the Ross's and Snow Geese. Thousands of them! And the managers of this refuge and others nearby manage - by flooding or draining ponds and by selectively mowing fields of maize for them to graze - to keep them predictably close at view. You can walk right up to this pond at the viewing area called The Flight Deck and stand alongside the geese on the grassy verges, watching their flock-friends swim, take off, and land in the pond that stretches from your feet to a couple hundred meters away ... all of it packed with these geese. This shot doesn't show the pond at its densest :eek!:
