When we headed to New Mexico one of the things I was really looking forward to was a trip up into the Sandia Mountains and specifically to the Sandia Crest House in hopes of seeing the famous rosy-finches. We made the trip on the third day of our visit in hopes of avoiding a snow storm that was forecast for the next day. We had beautiful weather and enjoyed seeing lots of snow already on the ground. The snow was pretty exciting for us Houstonians but once we reached the top, we decided that maybe a little less snow would be nice, especially when we discovered that the crest house was closed and we were going to have to trudge through the high snow to get views of our pink birds!

Well, as is often the case in birding, we didn’t get exactly what we hoped for. As it turned out, most of our group had to look at the finches from the parking lot where views were challenging at best. I was lucky enough to get some all too brief views and click off a few photos of all three species of rosy-finches. I think my favorite was the Black Rosy-Finch. The black really sets off the pink, what a beautiful little bird!

www.texastargetbirds.com

_MG_1707-web

Leucosticte atrata