Boolie’s Blog

Bandelier National Monument was easily one of our favorite places during our first trip to New Mexico. The informational materials there pointed out that the modern Pueblo peoples don’t like the homes of the ancestral Pueblos to be referred to as ruins (and the implication that they are abandoned) as they feel a strong spiritual connection to their ancestors there.

The old cliff and cave dwellings aren’t abandoned in more ways than that, as we saw a variety of wildlife even in the main part of the day. Some of the animals I had never seen before, such as Williamson’s sapsucker, canyon wrens, rock squirrels, and a few lizards I wasn’t able to identify.

And then there were animals I had seen before but was still delighted to see, such as this fence lizard I found sunning itself beside the trail as I made my way back to the Visitor’s Center.

On our first trip to New Mexico, my wife and I spent our first day at Bandelier National Monument. Most of the day we wandered about the cliff dwellings built by the ancestral Pueblo, even putting aside our fear of heights to climb the wooden ladders to a kiva high in the cliffs.

We still had enough time at the end of the day to wander up to the western edge of the park and do a little hiking on the Cerro Grande trail. At the trailhead parking lot, this sapsucker flew up into a tree right next to the wooden fence. The tree was obviously a favorite as it had drilled a bunch of irregular holes on this side of the tree and a regular patchwork of squares on the other side.

It was my first time to ever see this sapsucker, a beautiful little jewel, and I was thrilled to be only a few feet away and watch it work the tree for sap. While we were watching, we heard a loud crashing sound a short ways away in the forest. As we looked up, a tree came crashing down across the trail ahead of us, unusual given the lack of wind.

If we hadn’t stopped to watch the sapsucker, we might have been on the trail when the tree came down, so this little bird became not only one of my favorite wildlife encounters from the trip, but also our most beautiful protector.