Autumn 2007

Greetings from Rancho Colibri!

I've been pretty negligent of this blog this year so here is a summary so far.

One thing different this year is my new camera. It is a Canon PowerShot S3 IS digital. It came with a whole box of goodies including wide-angle and telephoto lenses. So far I am still just learning about it's basic operations. It is 6.0 MP with 12X optical zoom. It does a hundred different things I have yet to learn but I love this camera! I have taken some really incredible photos with it. I am still perfecting the technique for birds and should be posting some of those soon. Meanwhile, enjoy my favorite butterfly photo.

Despite sightings in the area a couple weeks earlier, our Hummingbirds got here to the Rancho the second week of April. We didn't seem to have as many as in past years but still enough to keep us occupied. They raised about six babies as far as we could determine. They left around the first week of October.

Right after that we got our first "winter" birds, White-breasted Nuthatches. We also have both Downey and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers. Followed by White-crowned Sparrows. Then about a week ago we got a Mountain Chickadee. We haven't had one for a couple years. Yesterday three Juncos showed up in the patio around sunset! It is really exciting watching for all the newcomers. Also last week the migration of the Sandhill Cranes began. The annual Festival of the Cranes is in a couple weeks at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge near Soccoro NM. We have also seen a couple Bald Eagles passing overhead just lazily drifting south over the Rio Grande.

Stay tuned...