snow flurries on Monday, thankfully no accumulation, and found out that we are 20 degrees below normal - all of Arizona is suffering with this cold. Enough! We needed to get out and decided yesterday to drive to a place called Whitewater Draw, a wildlife refuge for birds flying south into Mexico. It is located about 25 miles southeast of here, not far from Bisbee. We were about 10 miles from the border of Mexico - again, lots of Border Patrol out. Dave has wanted to take pictures of birds and wildlife with his different camera lenses and he had great opportunity yesterday. We have no idea how many cranes we saw but the log where we had to sign in said that this past March 2011 - a count was done 
and 20,958 were seen. How they counted them is beyond us! Needless to say - we saw many. The picture on the left shows gray splotches - these are the cranes and as far as you could see in all directions. Some sleeping, some talking, some doing a mating dance, some chasing each other. This Draw had a nice walkway and two different decks out over the ponds with observation scopes where you could get great vista views of these magnificant birds. This past winter we saw sandhill cranes at South Padre Island, as well as Whooping Cranes on a separate tour on the Island, when we walked on the boardwalk of a nature preserve near the ocean. These sandhill crane birds are big, and noisy. We also saw them flying overhead when we walked Tent Rocks National Monument while we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What we know is these birds fly south from as far away as Siberia! and upper Canada down through Nebraska, with a stop over on the Platte River (there's that river again), and then on to New Mexico, then south into Arizona - stopping here, and then moving on into Mexico. The migration starts around the beginning of October and they start the return migration in March back to upper Canada for the summer. Adults are about 5 1/2 feet tall, weigh about 10 pounds, and have a wingspan of about 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet. Big. And noisy. We could hear them calling to each other while in flight as we turned down the dirt road near the entrance to 
Whitewater Draw. Spent about 2 1/2 hours just staring and looking and being in awe of these birds. We also saw different kids of hawks, ducks - waders and divers, eagles, small woodland birds, we think we saw Snow Geese. Dave had a great time taking photos, and I just watched. I could not believe I saw that many in one place. In January there is a Sandhill Crane festival the the town we were in sponsors and many people come from all over to watch and have fun. Glad we were able to be there without the people - I am sure people noises would have scared them away.The cranes were quiet for a couple of hours and then, like a bell going off, about twenty to thirty would rise and fly away south. Wait a minute and another thirty lifted and flew off. And another thirty, etc. Amazing to see. Today, Friday, we are doing our cleaning, laundry, packing up, we leave in the morning to head to Picacho Peak RV Resort, about 50 miles south of Phoenix. We plan to stay there until the beginning of March. We will also be close to our 3 grandgirls, they will be a short 55 minute drive from our RV. We plan to check out many other campgrounds, looking for a best-fit for next winter. And of course get our grandgirl fixes, do many sightseeing things - we know this area really well since we have been in Phoenix every 3 months or so for a couple of weeks over the last 8 years. And, we want to catch up with our friends Phil and Sandra who we met last winter in Texas, and again in September when they were working the dude ranch in Wyoming. Since this is their first winter in AZ, maybe we can show them some fun things to do. The neat thing about this wintering south of Phoenix - we do not have the constraint of time and now can take our time to see and experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment