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Friday, February 25, 2011 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 23, 2011
Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 23, 2011

Thousands

Several thousand Snow Geese spent the afternoon at the pond with me Wednesday. I took way too many pictures but none that adequately communicate how many Geese were here.

Night camp

Site 10 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, 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.

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