New Mexico - South of Albuquerque

Sunrise at the wildlife refuge

The day after my fun day at the Albuquerque balloon festival, the winds stayed too high for the balloons to inflate so all activities were called for the day.Sensing this in the morning, and after listening to wind and rain all night, we headed off for the bird refuge that Tom had been at the day I was ballooning.

I walked with him for a little while, then soon found that I was looking for the little critters, Ok, I was bored with birding.  

Like always it’s hard at first to see the smaller insects.  Training your eye to go from the big scene to the minute is hard. Once you do spot something, then you usually see a whole bunch of somethings!

In this case I was seeing and hearing things jump as we walked along the trail.  Once I stopped to follow the motion of the ‘jump’ and the bouncing grass, I soon found many different grasshoppers.

 

 

 

And then while following a large beetle up and over plants and leaves

 

I found these two in amplexus – when one of the species is holding the other while mating.

 

A nice backlit shot of some fluff was going to end my morning, when Tom called to me to freeze! 

A bobcat was very casually walking towards us.  We were on one side of an irrigation ditch, and at first it was on the same side.  Then seeing us, it crossed to the other side and kept coming towards us.

 

 Tom had his camera on his tripod and went to step around it.  In doing so, the tripod and he made a scrunching noise which startled the bobcat. 

It went into the bushes right across from us and watched us from behind thick grass.  

  It only sat there for a few minutes watching then slowly poked its head out and smiled at me!

  

It sauntered back down the path from the way it had come from.   It was a good morning!  How cool to see this wild animal so close!