Arroyo Seco, Arroyo Hondo, Winter Scenes. 02-07-2024.
Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. This week two sides of winter in Arroyo Seco and Arroyo Hondo.
As they say… “if you don’t like the weather, wait for five minutes”. The scene in the second image was shot a few days apart from the first image and about a 20º F warmer difference in temperature. Looking outside today we’ve had rain sleet, snow, hail, and blue skies. Tomorrow?… tee-shirt weather, who knows!
The weather in the mountains continues to leave a lot of snow in its wake. I heard that the ski areas are doing well from the last three storms that moved through the area. That’s good for the spring run-off and the farmers. The skiers are enjoying it and apparently, it’s good powder skiing, but that part is lost on me. I’m looking forward to the peace and solitude of cross-country, and snowshoeing again.
If you look closely in the sky, upper right, in the following image you can see a flock of birds, commonly named Pinyon Jays. I waited for them to come closer but they had other intentions. Last year we had very large flocks of Pinyon Jays in the thousands in our San Cristobal Valley. I just counted 157 in this shot, a small number of the ones I saw.
On the day I shot the image above I drove with the windows down from Taos, across the mesa. When I got to this spot I made a U-turn to photograph one of my favorite locations.
The Pinyon Jay was outside the kitchen window feeding off seeds on the fence that the squirrels stole from the bird feeders and dropped. I was watching the bird through the iPhone wifi tether app on my camera with a 300mm lens.
As always, thank you for looking. I hope it’s a good week where you are. To all my friends in California, stay safe. G