Bird Season – The Bosque del Apache

You may have noticed from my archives that I enjoy painting scenes of the Bosque del Apache.  This amazing bird sanctuary, located just south of Albuquerque, is the migratory home for thousands of Sandhill Cranes and tens of thousands of Snow Geese each winter.  This past week my mother and I paid a two day visit and were rewarded with the perfect combination of warm weather, fall color, and newly arrived birds!

Bosque del Apache

Bosque del Apache from Marsh Deck

The landscape of the Bosque, a series of managed waterways and marshes designed to mimic the wetlands of the Rio Grande (which runs along the edge of the refuge) is a landscape painter’s paradise of constantly changing scenery, with magnificent cottonwoods and colorful reflections in the many pools and acequias, as well as dramatic sunrises and sunsets that delicately tint the distant mountains.

And that’s without the addition of birds! Around this time of year, they begin to arrive in large numbers and the sky is filled with elegant lines of cranes and broken white ribbons of snow geese, a calligraphy of birds.  The vastness and tranquility of this environment is like no other, and I suppose that’s why I continue to return to it in my work.   There’s a tremendous thrill at seeing so many of another species gathered together in one place, coupled with an inexplicable sense of  longing.  In late fall and winter, it draws me like a magnet – I’ll return again in December to enjoy an entirely different, yet comfortingly familiar landscape.