Misery with benefits

Got to the oasis yesterday after lunch only to have my allergies erupt. Something's blooming that my body objects to. Strenuously. I tried to start watering but was too miserable, so I retreated to my cabin and took Claritin.

Having gone to bed too early, I woke up at 3 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Then at daylight I took another Claritin in order to face the watering ordeal. After taking it, I read on the bottle to not take more than one in a 24 hour period. Oops!. It had only been 12 hours. So I started watering amid insufferable gnats. Tried to cover my eyes with goggles and ears with insect repellant and carried on. Maybe because of too much Claritin and Fluticasone, my nose bled off and on all the while I watered. 

By the time it got really hot (102°) a vestige of migrants visited the water drip, so that felt very rewarding. Made me forget all my misery. Looks like the birds had it so good where they were that they were in no rush to migrate. I caught this Townsend's Warbler preening after a bath.

And this Nashville Warbler caught in the act of bathing. It's a long hot trip for them, but they probably dared not procrastinate longer for fear of getting trapped in a freak blizzard.

A couple of Wilson's Warblers made their way down to the hose where I had it watering a tree, but they wouldn't bathe there with me watching.

This weekend I had my son cover the space between the two blind sections. I'm sure the wind will wreck the plastic soon enough. Eventually. I hope to cover it in metal.

While watering it occurs to me how much water I expend on a single tree to get it to 15-20 foot tall, only to have a killer freeze take it down to the ground. And I'm just thankful they all survived. But still.....  And this is one of my most native trees, a Netleaf Hackberry.

I don't know what kind of grasshopper this is, but I've never seen one like it before.