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Saturday, November 24, 2012 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Eared Grebe, Juvenile, Diving, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, November 22, 2012
Eared Grebe, Juvenile, Diving, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, November 22, 2012

Picture this

Getting a picture of these little grebes is a bit of a challenge. When feeding they spend maybe 10 seconds on the surface followed by 45 seconds submerged in this turbid water. They go down here ... and pop up over there just long enough to get the camera focused on them and down they go again only to pop up way ... over ... there. Rinse and repeat.

Nightcamp

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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