So this post is about Hummingbirds at the Dripping Springs National Recreation Area, which is a 10 minute drive up the hills on the east side of Las Cruces. We drove up there with friends visiting from Austin two days ago, and Dennis got transfixed by the Hummingbirds and took 299 pictures of them.

Most of these, but not all, are Rufous Hummingbirds migrating south. They are the ones with redish-orange body feathers. The females also typically have a bright red spot on their throat. But there are other breeds that we are not sure of.

And in the pictures where it looks like they might be lovers or might be fighting, they are fighting. Hummers are very territorial and defend food sources as much as they can - there were only 3 feeders, and there were probably over 50 birds. (And a few wasps.) The Rufous were interlopers.


Female Rufous Hummingbird

 Male Broad-tailed Hummingbird

 Another Male Broad-tailed

 Female Rufous

 Female Rufous

 Female Rufous

 Female Rufous (and a wasp) in flight as a female Broad-tailed feeds

 Female Broad-tailed

 Female Rufous facing off the others at the feeder

 

 Female Rufous at rest

 Female Broad-tailed at rest

Last week we took off a few days to spend in the Colorado Rockies. As usual it was a very nice trip and we had a great time. Hope you will enjoy the pictures.

On a side note, one of the features of our travels is that Mike likes to find new music for each trip and so, in our minds, each trip ends up associated with some set of music. If you have not discovered them on your own, we would like to recommend two albums that dominated this trip for us:  Bruce Springsteen's new album "Western Sky" and the sound track from the movie "Echo in the Canyon," which is built around a live concert by Jakob Dylan and friends doing covers of music that grew out of Laurel Canyon in the late 60s. (It is also a pretty darn good movie.)


Driving through White Sands National Monument - near Las Cruces - with the Sacramento Mountains in the distance

Breakfast in Vaughn, New Mexico - fun little diner, but don't bother stopping here (Indigestion from a waffle?)

Early morning at Sugarite Canyon State Park, NM

Hiking in the Rocky Mountains near Nederland, CO

Ruby Crowned Kinglet 

Aspen Grove in Cold Springs Campground, outside of Golden, Colorado

Chip (or maybe Dale)

Echo Lake - along the road to Mt Evans, CO

Ducks in Echo Lake

Blue Damselfly on a leaf

Dennis at Echo Lake Picnic Area

View of the mountains from Leadville, CO - there are supposed to be something like a dozen 14,000 foot peaks along this road

Yellow flowers in the desert in northern New Mexico

New Mexico sky - near Bandelier National Monument

Frijoles Canyon - Bandelier National Monument

Dennis at the visitor center - Bandelier National Monument

Mike in the ruins of the main pueblo at Bandelier

Ruins of the cliff dwellings at Bandelier 

A current resident of Bandelier

Wildflowers at Bandelier 

The moon at Bandelier 

And after we got back to Las Cruces we took another hike:  About half a mile from the pecan groves along the Rio Grande River, Mike at the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument