After a very successful 5 day photo tour at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, we are waiting for our flight back to Los Angeles at the ABQ International Sunport, AKA, the Albuquerque airport. I’m really happy to report that the shooting conditions and the management of Bosque this year, compared to last year, were a huge upgrade. Bosque has always been a great location for bird photography but over the years I’ve seen my share of ups and downs with the photography conditions. Unfortunately the conditions during the last few years, last year in particular, had major issues, but hopefully the turnaround this year is will continue into the future.
Temps for the tour were in the 60s and 70s, with mornings around freezing with 3 or 4 cloudy photo sessions during the tour. The most productive locations were the north farm fields on the north loop and the Crane Pool (formerly known as the South Crane Pool). Bird numbers were good this year although the snow geese were more spread out than we like to see.
The most important change for this year was on the North Loop which is back to it’s normal route with access to the fields for front lighting in the morning. The conditions at the farm fields were excellent, with a nice mix of crops trimmed very close to the road. Last year the normal farm loop road was blocked with boulders and the road was rerouted to the back side of the farm fields which is great if it’s overcast with north winds, but murder for anything else. The ideal solution would be to open both North Loop roads, but that’s not my decision unfortunately.
The Crane Pool, formerly known as the South Crane Pool, continues to offer very good close-up opportunities for cranes as it did last year but, I still wish they would re-flood the North Pool. Having all the tourists, locals, bird watchers and photographers in one small area is less than ideal. RVs parked parallel in the early morning at the current Crane Pool can block the early AM light throwing a huge shadow on the cranes. Splitting the crowd up into North and South Pools would be much better experience for everyone, including the birds. As it is now, space for tripods at the pool and space for vehicles in the parking lot is going to be extremely tight for the festival until early December with the single parking lot, I’m glad I won’t be around to have to deal with it.
The biggest negative this year was the Main Pool, which is on the left after the toll booth. The pool was flooded and perfectly trimmed for photographers, a super job, but the only problem is there are zero geese visiting the pool and maybe a handful of cranes at the north end. The geese were overnighting somewhere in the back of the reserve and would fly into the Crane Pool most mornings instead of landing in the main pool. Hopefully the Main Pool photo conditions will improve later in the year.
The photography this year at Bosque this year was fantastic, I’m already looking forward to leading my tour there in 2020, for more information if you would like to join us on our tour next year follow this link for more info: https://www.robertotoole.com/bosque-tour Special thanks to all my photo tour participants that made the tour possible, we had a great time and shared some nice moments and photo opportunities. See you at Bosque in 2020!