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Cattails bursting open.


Yes, the foreground, background and sky are filled with cranes.

Boogie down!

According to my brief research on the web there are three spellings for playing hookie (hooky, hookey). Yesterday I shut the office lights off at 2pm and headed 90 miles to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge to see the migration of the fabulous Sandhill Cranes. The full story is too long to tell here, but I'll try to hit the highlights. I've lived here for 5 years and this was my first effort to go see them. I had no idea how to find them or what to expect. My web research said they would be at the Alamosa Wildlife Refuge and the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge - and that this should be peak time.

1. I first stopped at the Alamosa refuge. I was the ONLY car there - no birds - no wildlife - hmmm. So I took a photo of the only thing that was abundant - cattails splitting open.

2. Since I was only 30 minutes from the other refuge I decided to bite the bullet and driver further. Once there, I looked and looked and finally saw two cranes. - big woo. - actually it was a big woo, but they were too far away for a good photo. Nonetheless, I took that photo in case I never saw more.

3. On my last ditch effort I pulled into the last view point. To my amazement there they were - about 20,000 of them. The information placard indicated that almost all of the Rocky Mountain migrating cranes stop here for about six weeks twice a year.

4. I took 1100 photos. It was amazing!!!!!!!!!!!