Calm Before The Storm

Even though it was my day off I was out early this morning working on the water bars on the trails. It rained hard last night, and I was anxious to access the damage and make any kind of adjustments I could before a major rain event is expected tonight and tomorrow. Worked hard all morning and got two of the trails repaired, the Lightning Bolt and the Buckskin Trails. Didn’t have time for the Abandoned Mines or Interruption Point Trails Now I just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Quartzsite RV Show

Today was our day off and we took the motor home to Quartzsite. The Quartzsite RV Show bills itself as “The largest gathering of RVs and RVers on Earth!” This is its 27th year and they expect over 150,000 people. The tiny community of Quartzsite that sits at the intersection of Arizona State Highway 95 and Interstate Highway 10 gets completely overrun with snowbirds every January. They overfill the town and spill out into the desert for miles and miles. We drove into this congested mess this morning for a pre-arraigned appointment with Henderson’s Line-Up to have a Roadmaster Heavy Duty Rear Anti-Sway Bar installed on our motor home. While Henderson’s did the work on our RV we toured the show. I meant to take some photos of the show, but I guess I was too busy hanging on to my wallet! When we returned to pick-up our motor home I asked Jeanette to snap this photo of me. By the way, the handling of the motor home is much improved.

Bird Walk #2

Rain on the roof woke us up at 4:00 this morning. It continued to rain off and on all morning. Our first rain of 2010, and very much needed, but not a very promising day for a bird walk. However nine people joined me at 2:00 for my weekly bird walk. Less than last week, they more than made up for it in cooperation and enthusiasm. Someone in the office had tipped them off that we had identified 22 birds last week, but I cautioned them that we had better weather last week and more people. But, at the end of the day we broke last weeks record with 23 birds!

The Side-blotched Lizard

We have been having tempatures in the low 70’s for several days now and on Friday’s Nature Hike we saw quite a few lizards along the trail. They are tiny and hard to get a close look at as they scurry off among the rocks. I took a photo or two and spent the afternoon struggling to make an identification. I had taken a close up photo of one last month, but it was only after a renewed effort yesterday that I got the identification right. What I originally thought was just a shadow on the side behind the front arm, turns out to be the identification mark of the Side-blotched Lizard.

Photo Upgrading

While staying here at Buckskin Mountain State Park this winter I am getting a good opportunity to take photos of birds, particularly because of the great variety in habitat. Some of the birds I see and photograph I already have in Cascade Ramblings. But my policy is to always show the “best” photo I have of any particular bird. So what is happening this winter is a number of my birds are getting their photo upgraded. The Cactus Wren, just taken this morning, is a case in point. It is replacing a photo I had of a Cactus Wren taken in Sabino Canyon in Tuscan two years ago. This is now the fourth bird to get a photo upgrade while here at the park.

Uninvited Guest

Yesterday was our day off and we took off to visit the Achii Hanyo Native Fish Facility located south of Parker. It took some effort to find as there were no signs and the only road there is a three and a half mile graveled access road along an irrigation canal. Achii Hanyo is Navajo, meaning fish ponds, and that is what it is, a number of fish ponds run by the US Fish and Wildlife in cooperation with the Colorado River Indian Tribes to raise primarily Bonytail Chub an endangered species of the Colorado River. Mark Yost is the resident biologist and gave us a very informative tour of the facilities. After our tour we returned to the car to find that a cat had jumped through an open window of the car and made himself comfortable in the back seat, much to the chagrin of our dog Buster.

Bird Walk

Monday I led the first of what is to be a weekly Bird Walk here at Buckskin Mountain State Park. I didn’t really have much of an idea of what to except, but I was actually surprised to have over a dozen interested people show up. Just looping through the campground here in an hour and a half we identified 22 different birds. The last bird we saw was this juvenile Cooper’s Hawk. It stuck me later that this hawk, who preys mostly on other birds, was watching the same little finches, sparrows, and flycatchers that we were.