As a native Texan, I've been interested and held in awe at the beauty of Taos, New Mexico and it's surrounding mountains, canyons, and imposing gorge looming to the west since I was a kid (and a kid lucky enough to spend a lot of time across NM before moving here as soon as High School was done). My daughter Ruby lives in the Taos area, so I make the drive up and over the mountains frequently to pick her up. These drives give me the chance to slip in some short-birding forays here and there before or after school-picks ups, mostly at the wetlands along Hwy 518 just south of Talpa (Rio Grande del Rancho Wetlands, Tierra Azul Wetlands), but occasionally down to Pilar to slip in the short but very productive drive along the Orilla Verde National Recreation area within the Rio Grande Gorge itself. As with most things, the best of these trips are those when Ruby can come with me!
January 17th
Ruby's house in Arroyo Seco is in a wonderful part of the valley, lush alfalfa fields, with abundant cottonwood gallery forests and sub-irrigated fields, the place is always great for birds, any time of year. I was happy to see the
Lewis' Woodpecker that has been around since May 2014 was still returning to her suet feeder and happily working the
Populus angustifolia (Narrow-leaf Cottonwood) trees around the yard. A first for me in her yard, a very cute
Red-breasted Nuthatch also visited the suet frequently, giving Ruby great looks at her lifer RBNU. Unfortunately the bird did not call, as I was describing it's nasaly trumpet call.
Gray-headed Dark-eyed Juncos made every bush and tree jump with activity.
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| Lewis' Woodpecker adult, Taos Co., NM 1/17/2015 |
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| Red-breasted nuthatch in Taos Co., NM 1/17/2015 |
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| Gray-headed Dark-eyed Junco, Taos Co., NM 1/17/2015 |
After departing Taos, proper, I turned to Ruby and made a bio-challenge, that we shouldn't leave Taos county (on our way back to Las Vegas) before seeing a Bald Eagle, challenge accepted! We took the short, but windy road from Ranchos down to Pilar before hanging a right off the busy hwy 68 and onto the tranquil Hwy 570 which follows the Rio Grande through the Gorge for 10 miles before climbing to the west up above the caprock at the bustling little village (sarcasm) of Carson, NM. It's one of those classic New Mexico backroads, where you'll spot landscape views familiar in travel magazines and post-cards from Taos.
As Ruby and I stopped to check out a mixed flock of sparrows, and to move a dead Sharp-shinned hawk (roadkill, probably a car) off the road, I spied a big shadow moving across the river's reflective blue. We both looked up to find a beautiful adult
Bald Eagle soaring in loops not 40m above our heads. Ruby had my binoculars and enjoyed National Geographic-quality views, while I grabbed my camera and took some not-so-National Geographic-quality photos.
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| Adult Bald Eagle soaring over the Rio Grande in the Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/17/2015 |
With our challenge-Eagle out of the way, and Ruby eager to get back home to Las Vegas to start on our to-do-list for the weekend (mostly involving playing, building cardboard houses, building snowmen, and watching movies) I knew her birding attention span would soon be out, luckily, 2 new duck species for her where present in good numbers along the Rio, and she enjoyed great looks at
Common Goldeneye drakes,
Common Mergansers, and the ubiquitous
Canada Geese, while I busied myself trying to take some decent photographs. I loved hearing her say, "I can actually see the golden-eye - wow that's cool!", things like this make me really repeat the mantra as often as I can - take a kid birding, it's good for them!
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| Common Goldeneye drakes (males) in Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/23/2015 |
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| A Common Merganser male in full breeding plumage in Orilla Verde. Merganser and Goldeneye ducks are the most common species within the river during winter, they're diving ducks, meaning they dive for fish as their primary diet, young trout be ware! Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/23/2015 |
January 23rd
I returned the following week to the Taos area to pick Ruby up for a long weekend. Her school pick up was on friday, so I decided to visit my dear friends Dani and Adam who are now living in Pojaque (after living 3 blocks away for the past 7 years) on Thursday and cut my friday commute short and get in some Pilar-birding! After a wonderful thursday night of playing bones (dominos), '
Wa-hoo', and enough rum to keep a corpse warm, I set off Friday morning (after a gallon of cheap gas-station coffee to counteract said Rum) for Pilar.
The actual village of Pilar is a great little haven of deciduous trees (Elm, Cottonwood, Russian Olive, Willow, and a few ornamentals) and bird feeders amidst a Pinon-Juniper dominated landscape. I find the best parking is at Dolores Rd (north end of Pilar), or at the mailboxes. The people who live in the area are friendly, and if you're wandering around the neighborhood, just make sure your binoculars are visible and you shouldn't be considered as a person of interest! A few bird-feeders visible from public roads offer nice concentrations of feeder-visitors, I found
Mountain Chickadees, Evening Grosbeaks, House Finches, and
Dark-eyed Juncos (Gray-headed, Pink-sided) along the roads, with an unending chorus of corvids;
Common Raven, American Crow, Western Scrub-Jay, and Black-billed magpie were all vocally present, proclaiming likely complex messages to each other.
The big surprise of my Pilar walk were 2
Eastern Bluebirds foraging between the river and road. I later found that EABL had been reported a few days earlier by some Taos birders (eBird) in the same area. Eastern Bluebirds can be common in the Albuquerque area and eastern edge of the state, but for them to be in Taos county is an uncommon event, with only a couple of records per year. These were my first for Taos county. Also in Pilar was a female
Hooded Merganser, flagged in eBird as 'rare' for Taos county, however many have been seen in the past few months, both on the Rio Grande, and in Ranchos de Taos.
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| An adult Eastern Bluebird in Pilar, NM was a great surprise. Eastern Bluebirds have a distinctively clean white belly that adds a nice tri-colored effect. Pilar, NM lies at the southern entrance of the Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM. 1/23/2015 |
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| Hooded Merganser female, Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/23/2015 |
A familiar bird across New Mexico, but uncommon in the gorge, a single
Northern Pintail was seen with a group of
Gadwall and
Canada Geese. This is one of my favorite ducks, for it's elegant shape and head pattern. During the Orilla Verde CBC on 12/17/2014 our group recorded and photo'd a single Northern Pintail drake as they are uncommon and documentation would be requested, could this be the same individual? Although it was in approximately the same place as the previous month, the Rio Grande is an artery of migration, with birds likely traveling up and down it's flow frequently, so short answer; hard to say. A handful of
Ring-necked Duck males and females were seen along with
Common Goldeneye in a
rapid section of the river. It's always fun watching ducks navigate riffles and rapids, as much of my observation time of ducks is on still-water lakes and bays.
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| Northern Pintail Drake on the Rio Grande, Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/23/2015 |
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| Ring-necked Duck (left), and Common Goldeneye (right), Orilla Verde Rec. Area, Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument, Taos Co., NM, 1/23/2015 |
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