Monday, February 15, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
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Illuminated, Sandhill Crane, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 15, 2010
I got one!
Getting interesting shots of these magnificent cranes in flight leaving the roost in the early morning light has turned into quite a project. Many many thousands of shots later I'm beginning to see the light - how positioning myself to catch the cranes leaving the roost in just the right light from just the right angle and firing away - taking hundreds of shots - can yield a satisfying one once in a while. What fun! And what an honor and privilege it is that the cranes will let all of us out here on a frosty morning to get so so close to their roost and flight path.
Night camp
Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.