Sand Hill Cranes

I'm interrupting the cheese talk for this post to tell you that the sand hill cranes, who winter over here, are leaving now. So if you live north of New Mexico you might be seeing them soon. There are thousands of them around here, and when they leave they all honk a lot, it is very noisy. They circle in huge rings, higher and higher until they are thousands of feet in the air, all of them at once. When they're high enough they head north in huge flocks. It is very noisy and sort of sad too, they are one of the wonderful things about winter. Here's a picture of them from near my house a few years ago. I took it with the zoom all the way out, so unfortunately there's a lot of clutter in the background that looks really close. But still one of my favorite pictures. It must have been in the fall, since it is green.And since I'm off topic anyway, this is a spring picture from a few years ago of flood irrigation in the NM river valley, from a hot air balloon. Most of the time it isn't this pretty.
I'll be back to cheese next time. Have a wonderful day!