Roswell, New Mexico
January 12, 2020
Yesterday was a beautiful, although a bit cold, morning. I took the same hike as I did the day before and as you will see, sunlight makes all the difference. Funny, I met a fellow on the trail who I had seen the day before on my hike and we were doing the same thing - same hike, better light.
I am starting to hit a groove on composing my photos although I'd still give myself a B/B-.
Beside the various rock formations, you will see a few photos of contrails - I love how they look against the "Colorado Blue" sky. The little stream you'll see in some of the photos is the "Colorado River" of this canyon.
You will also see a photo of some birds flying. This area is on the migration path for many types of birds. The photo is of Canada geese. How do I know? They were honking like "get out of my way." 😂 During my four days at Palo Duro I must have seen 20 such flocks - a couple of hundred birds apiece? As you will see they are not in a classic V formation but as I watched they sure try hard for form one. To me it looks like there may be several small Vs that are part of the overall attempt to form one big V. I wondered what happens to the weaker geese; I assume that some geese are stronger than the others. Do the strong ones take the lead more often so that the weaker ones take advantage of the draft more often? A park ranger told me that the geese often land in this area due to the presence of water and grain.
Hope you enjoy this 12 minute video (hey, there were a lot of good photo opportunities!). Given the color of the rock, I went with a fire and smoke theme before walking on sunshine.