More tribulation

A spring broke on the water trailer and before I could get it to where I wanted to park it the other spring broke. Now it's sitting, unmovable, in the middle of the road. My husband is coming down from Alpine tomorrow. He ordered a new trailer, which hopefully I'll get early next week. I'm so stressed from having to haul water. The new trailer has 2 axles so maybe that will do the trick. I just hope my little pickup can pull it. Maybe it'll rain.

On a brighter side, I had time to take pictures since I couldn't haul water. I love Red Yucca. When I first planted my oasis I put in a small patch of them, but gophers (?) uprooted them so bad they all finally died. So a couple of years ago I made wire baskets under the ground and planted some inside them. So far it seems to be working. This is the second one that has ever bloomed.

And a couple of birds from today. What's not to love about a Varied Bunting?

And a Grasshopper Sparrow...

Alpine flowers

My sister, who lives one mile from me, said she got half an inch of rain Saturday evening so this morning my husband took me to the oasis to see if there was any water in my tanks. Not a drop. Very disappointing. Nothing in my rain gauge either. So back in town I had to content myself with the flowers here. Bluebonnets have totally overtaken my asparagus patch.

And the roses look gorgeous. I forget what kind they are. Fiesta or something.

If it doesn't rain today or tomorrow I'm going to have to start hauling water in a couple of days.

More blooms

Here is the Berlander Acacia in the courtyard.

And the Wisteria. It's not as lush as normal, but at least it's still alive.

Next is the Lantana

The slopes are covered with blooms of ocotillo but I can't seem to capture anything except the close ones with the camera. Maybe if you enlarge the photo and look closely you can get a better sense of it.

Needless to say, the hummers aren't interested in the feeders these days.

Birds and blooms

Getting that time of year. Quite a few migrants moving through but don't stick around long. Maybe with all the insects they'd get too fat to ever move on if they hung around longer. A nice thunderhead today and chance of rain this Easter weekend. Any chance is better than none.... in theory.

Hauled a record 5 loads of water from the lodge today, totally nearly 2000 gallons. You can't say I'm not determined. I once heard the best way to do time in prison is just get through one day at a time, not do the whole sentence every day, or something to that effect. So I'm just concentrating on doing the best I can in the day at hand, and don't let myself think beyond that.

I saw some interesting warblers and expected to photograph them after watering, before dark, but they had left already. One was a Northern Parula, and the other I think was a Townsend's, but I didn't see enough of the latter to be sure. Here's a Lark Sparrow that I could only photograph from a distance, so not great quality, but I think they're such a neat bird.

As I write this I hear the Elf Owls calling outside. Maybe in the morning I'll get to photograph some warblers.

Nearly everything in the courtyard is blooming. I'll take more pictures tomorrow, but here is a Goldenball Leadtree. To the left of it is a Fantex Ash. Its foliage is patchy, but what's there looks healthy.

The Mexican Elder tree at the oasis looks great.

Dusky Flycatcher

Yesterday's flycatcher was still here so I got a few better photos of it. It seems that it has to be a Dusky Flycatcher. The empidinax species are really challenging to ID.

I'm pleased to see the Mexican Elder tree has blossoms, but I'm sure the birds will gobble them up before they become fruit. When I was a kid I loved Elderberry pancakes, made with the blossoms, not the fruit, as I recall.

First banding for 2012

Kelly Bryan came down because I had a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, which is the first one we've had in this area for the month of March, so we wanted to band it.

It's also unusual in that it had a couple of white (leucistic) wing feathers.

As Kelly explained to me, it was born last year and hasn't gotten it's adult gorget yet.

Here's an empidinax flycatcher that showed up after Kelly left. Not sure what it is yet.

Update: Kelly thinks it's a Dusky Flycatcher. I'll go with that.

A few clouds

The landscape looked lovely this morning as I drove to the lodge for water. (Rosillos Mountains in background.)

Below is West Corazone peak.

 West and East Corazones as seen from near the lodge. 

Fly saucers

My daughter-in-law bought some Tanglefoot sticky stuff, planning to coat her hummingbird feeders in an effort to keep bees off the feeders. She lives in Alpine and we don't have those nasty black flies there.

But she couldn't clean it off the feeders afterwards, so decided not to use it anymore, and offered it to me. I brought it to the oasis and coated some small paper plates with it, thend hung them by my feeders, hoping to absorb some of the flies. Here's a fresh one...

And here's one I discarded after a couple of days. I don't really notice less flies, but any reduction is better than none.

Nashville Warblers

I don't know how many there were but it seemed wherever I looked I saw one or two.

I didn't try for better photos because I was all pumped up to haul water all day and give everything a good soaking. Things are leafing out and I want them to make shade before the 100° temperatures hit. But I had a flat tire on my pickup and by the time I got that changed I was exhausted, and couldn't risk going for water without a spare.

Oasis looks better this year

Last year's devastating cold in February really hurt the oasis. This winter was mild and I can already see the difference. Now if I can just keep it watered.

Courtyard is greening up as you can see. I heard an Elf Owl in it at dusk tonight. Below is the Mexican Elder tree at the oasis. Looking good, all things considered.

This is the only cottonwood tree that looks alive. The growth is only on the upper portion of the tree but seems healthy enough. Below is one that is dead except possibly the trunk. I'm going to try to keep it alive, for now anyway.