There is no way to sugar coat the bad water news pill as 2026 enters what should be the rising limb of the runoff season, as Rin Tara and John Fleck report in this week's water update.

Consider:

• Flow at Embudo, on the Rio Grande upstream from Española, is at its second lowest level for this point in the year in a record that, with a few gaps in the record in the early 20th century, goes back to the late 1800s.
• Flow at the the USGS Albuquerque gage is the lowest it has been at this point in the year in half a century.
• With the snowpack in the Rio Grande headwaters nearly melted out, the Rio Grande flowing out of the mountains at Del Norte in Colorado may already have peaked. It doesn't usually peak until June.
• Flow on the Gila in Southern New Mexico is the lowest it has been at this point in the year since record keeping began in 1928.

And yet... Rin went hiking over the weekend in the Gila and saw Painted Redstarts and a whole lot more, and John rode his bike down to Albuquerque bosque (a map to Albuquerque's delightful "Glass Garden here), where the cottonwoods are greening up. Both rivers - the Gila and the Rio Grande - were low but still lovely.

Guest: Tucker Davidson

It seemed unfair – asking Tucker Davidson to name his favorite bird. A senior water associate at Audubon Southwest, Davidson is a hopeless bird nerd – pulling out his binoculars as he drives Rio Grande levee roads and walks through Albuquerque’s bosque.

Davidson joins Rin Tara and John Fleck to talk about the birds he loves, the places he loves, and how you can turn to birds to bring hope as drought and climate change dry New Mexico’s rivers.

And you, too, can visit some of his favorite places in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley:

- The Rio Grande Nature Center

- Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitor’s Center (especially the pond out by the parking lot, which Tucker and his Audubon colleagues help supply with water)

- The ponds in the bosque near Tingley Beach

- For the dirt-road adventurous, the “River Mile 60” area near Fort Craig

- Any farm road around the valley, especially after irrigation. The birds love it.

Tucker’s birding bottom line: look for places where the water slows down.

Water Update: a shrinking Colorado River forecast

A declining runoff forecast for the Colorado River Basin means a tough year for water users as the Bureau of Reclamation juggles competing needs. Expect low releases in 2026 from Glen Canyon Dam, which means lower levels at Lake Mead this year, and efforts to move water downstream from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming Border to prop up reservoir levels at Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam.

On the Rio Grande, flows remain low, the snowpack is almost completely melted, irrigators can expect another dry year with reduced supplies for locally grown crops, and we should expect the Rio Grande to dry again this year through Albuquerque.