Thankfully they didn't catch any of the Sandhills :o
The rest of the story- See the little buck mixed in all of the does? He spooked a few does and they in turn spooked the Sandhill Cranes.
Bosque was slow this week. The winds were not favorable for landing shots. The bird population was down. It was warm (sort of) and it seemed like a lot of the birds were in fields off refuge property. Ducks were in abundance.
We saw a few Coyotes but I didn't get any decent shots.
We saw a cat two days in a row. When we first saw it we thought "Coyote!" Neither of us thought to point a camera at it because we initially thought that it was a Coyote and they could care less about pickups or people. After we watched it walk a little while it was pretty obvious that it was a cat. We tried to get closer and it ran into the brush. As it ran we were positive that it was a cat. After it disappeared we were discussing the sighting and I thought about the tail. It was long and shaped like a "lazy J". The cat we saw on the first day was a little big for a Bobcat and then there was the tail problem... but it was dusk and we chalked it up to bad light and distance. The next morning, after we left the crane pools, we bee-lined it for where we saw the cat and it was there again! Unfortunately it was "way down there" and once again we opted to try to get closer rather than grab an "evidence" shot so we missed out again. My personal belief is that this was a young Mountain Lion and not a Bobcat. My buddy is on the fence about it and since we don't have anything to look at image wise there's no way to know for certain. I found out that Mountain Lions have been confirmed at Bosque so who knows. Keep an eye out for them if you go.