Festival week

A busy week for CMO. Today was Larry Ditto's hummingbird workshop. It went well in that the weather wasn't real hot (around 80°), the mosquitoes weren't too bad, and they didn't get rained out. On the other hand, it seems the male Lucifer Hummingbirds have mostly headed south already, leaving the females to finish the last nesting.  Or maybe the males forage far and wide and leave the feeder resources for the females that don't want to stray far from the nests. At any rate, the males have wrapped up their part in the process. So, while females were plentiful at the feeders, males not so much.

Glad I enlarged the parking area. And this isn't by any means a large group. Don't know how I managed before, but I can say, it was really difficult at times. Later this week vehicles will be crammed in everywhere, but at least now it won't be as bad.

Here's a female Lucifer checking out one of the photo setups.

I haven't posted any photos in the last couple of days because there's nothing interesting to me at the oasis lately. I've begun to realize that when I get the interesting OOPS (Out-Of-Place Species) they arrive after a big storm has blown them in. Then they hang around, rest and refuel, and are gone in an hour or so. Once in a while they stay longer, especially birds. Like the Varied Thrush that came in with a storm and stayed all winter. So I need to be sure and be here after big storms if I want to find OOPS.

My allergies are getting bad and I only have Zyrtec here. It makes me sleepy. Going to town for a couple of days and restock my Claritin. Also going to get new toilet parts for the guest house. The toilet malfunctioned and I lost 3000 gallons of water. That's at least the third time that's happened in the last 20 years. It never happens at the house. Surely by now I've learned to either turn it off when it's not in use or check it every day if it is in use. I'm not hurting for water now, but it could have just as well happened at a time when I was short.

Today's eclipse was disappointing. I tried to photograph it with my iphone but the photos didn't show the moon. Just the sun as normal, even though when I looked at it through eclipse glasses, I could see it clearly. I used the same glasses in front of my iphone lens. The sky never darkened like I expected. Just looked as if a cloud had gotten in front of the sun, a normal everyday occurrence. Had I not know there was an eclipse in progress, it would never have occurred to me. Here in the Big Bend it never covered half the sun.