New normal

Kelly caught this snake so I could photograph it up close and personal. It's a Western Black-neck Garter Snake, a real common species here.

I saw this Neon Skimmer today and accidentally didn't have my camera settings right. I thought this gave the dragonfly a nice neon-y look.

Otherwise, not much going on. Two weeks ago today I fell and hurt my tailbone. Not thirty minutes after me thinking that it only hurts now when I go up steps, I slipped in mud and fell again. Camera got all muddy again. This time there was no hard tree root and I caught myself with my shoulder. My bad shoulder that won't let me raise my arm up. That shoulder. So I felt the pain there and in my neck, but I think I'll be OK. I know from experience my neck won't move in the night, and I'll have to move it with my hands for a couple of nights, as I had to with my last fall, but never sweat the small stuff. I'm sure lots of people live with worse. Too bad muddy places are the best for dragonflies, and of course, very little ground here is actually flat, especially when I'm going down to the water's edges a lot. Love water, not complaining. 

The stucco tank is leaking a little, at least an inch a day, but as the level goes down and the pressure lessens, so will the leakage. I'll keep patching it every winter, but I'm sure it'll always leak a little. Just have to live with it and be glad for what water I have and what habitat I can maintain.

My day in pictures

At daylight I went to get the pump set up to pump water from the upper settling pond to the stucco tank. The water is about a foot down below the dam because it loses a lot overnight. That's why prompt pumping is important. The NOISY gas pump is sucking the water out and running it into the 2" blue line at the center of the photo.

From there the blue line runs alongside the big tank and goes across a corner of it into an underground 3" pipe that comes out near the stucco tank.

I got the whole thing set up in record time, about an hour. Below photo shows where I rigged the fittings to put the water into the 3" pipe.

And the next photo is where the 3" pipe exits the ground. Found fittings for there too and am running it into the stucco tank. 

The water level in the tank ended up 18" below capacity, which is a few inches fuller than it was after pumping from that June 15 rain, so I'm good to make it to next rainy season if I have to, barring leaks or faucets left on.

Meanwhile, in between gassing up the pump and making sure everything was going smoothly, I decided to whittle away at the dead cottonwood tree. The only place that could accommodate the brush I sawed off was the arroyo, and as it's between the two dams, it had 2 feet of water in it. So I sloshed down the arroyo with every limb I cut off. I used my skill saw some, and a hand saw some. Yes, it was a killer, but by me doing it carefully, one branch at a time, and soon, the least amount of impact would happen to the smashed vegetation. I didn't think about doing a before picture until I had already cleared the path to the arroyo, so this is kind of a "project underway" shot.

After 8 hours of pumping, and about 4 hours of whittling, I could have moved the pump and lines to pump out the arroyo, but chose not to. For one, I was too exhausted to set up the pump and lines, etc., plus the arroyo vegetation is important to me. We'll surely get more rain, anyway. If the water wasn't full of gambusias, I might have talked myself into it in order to prevent mosquitoes, but that isn't a concern anymore this year.

So here is the after shot looking south. The tree trunk is still blocking the path, I can't do anything about that until I can get someone to come with a chain saw. That acacia tree (Schott's, I think), in the middle of the photo, I rescued from its flattened state. That light colored stick that looks like a trunk is actually a prop I put under it to get it to grow back straight again.

This last photo is the after shot looking north toward the water-filled arroyo

And now my body is so angry with me that it refuses to do my bidding. But it has a short memory.

Little rain with big consequences

As I was writing the previous blog post a violent storm came up. Even though I only got two-tenths inch of rain, it is obvious upstream somewhere got a great deal more. The west arroyo ran for over two hours. The big cement tank topped off and the wildlife pond filled up.

AND, the big cottonwood tree blew over. I did say violent storm, didn't I? But I knew that tree would blow over sooner or later, and dreaded the damage it would do. Our prevailing winds are from the northeast. Luckily, the wind that blew it over came from the southeast. I couldn't have guided it better if I had been there. It fell into the path to the arroyo and did very minimal damage. Whew! I had no idea which way the wind came from. I stayed indoors during the storm because the lightning was deafening and on target. Afterwards, as I was driving to the oasis, I saw the tree missing and was dreading confronting the damage. So I was greatly relieved.

There wasn't enough runoff to make it all the way into the stucco tank. Almost though!

So I rigged up my new pump and helped some of the water make it in.

Tomorrow I'll rig up a way to get the water from the upper settling pond (photo below) to this tank.  Normally, the dirt tanks fill up and I top the above tank off with that water, but the dirt tanks didn't catch any water today. I'm not set up to pump water all the way from the upper settling pond to the stucco tank without doing a couple hours of rigging. To be continued....

Going over upper dam towards center & into wildlife pond far right

Around the oasis

The soapberries are blooming again. I was excited thinking interesting butterflies would be on them, but search as I might, all I could find are other insect species on them. The background speckles you see on most of my photos are dirt inside my camera. My son will clean it next time he visits, meanwhile, I have to live with it, or send my camera away for cleaning. I was hoping with my new bridge camera I could send the Canon off, but I'm afraid I might miss an important photo doing that. The new camera just doesn't do the quality I want, at least not with my current abilities to use it.

Also the Grape Ivy (see post of Oct 23, 2012 for more about that species) is getting ready to fruit prolifically. Alas, no butterflies on it either.

Drier and drier

I sure hate watching my wildlife pond drying up in the middle of summer's rainy season. I could add water to it, but that's too risky. If I knew for sure we'd get good rains later this year, I would, but I can't know that, no matter how much I believe it.

Barely any water can be found in it, but this snake manages...  for a little while yet.

Western Black-neck Garter Snake

I don't often see a Blue-fronted Dancer at CMO, so was fortunate to get a photo of this one, although at the time, I didn't know that's what it was. Another ID by Kelly. Don't know what I'd do without him, and Brian, to ID things for me. I wouldn't be having as much fun, that's for sure.

And normally I wouldn't post yet another photo of a Widow Skimmer, but when I downloaded this one, I noticed the twigs are covered with eggs. Maybe damselfly eggs? (Click on photo to see the eggs better)

Rain is in the forecast

An old-timer birder, Pansy Espy,* always told Kelly Bryan that if you saw a cloud cap on Blue Mountain (between Ft Davis and Davis Mountains Resort) then it was going to rain. Well, we saw it this morning so I'm waiting for it to rain. Of course, I'm sure she didn't mean in the Christmas Mountains, but even the less reliable weather service is forecasting rain. They can't both be wrong can they?

By the looks of all the blooms around Alpine, you'd think it must have gotten lots of rain already, but that hasn't been the case. I can't find any butterflies around town since a little cool front arrived.

The monsoons will arrive, I'm not worried.

_______________________________________

*I was sorry to never have met Pansy before she passed away several years ago, but I did spend several months entering the birding data she left behind (those that included dates and locations) into Ebird, so I feel a special bond with her. In her days very few people kept any kind of bird sightings records, so I was glad for what I could glean from hers.

Fun, fun, fun

Grim reminder of the fires a couple of years ago                                                

Got two lifers at the Davis Mountains Preserve today. Both Cloudywings. Here is the Desert Cloudywing...

And here is the Drusuis Cloudywing. Thank you, Brian for the IDs. Hopefully, I have them right. I didn't find the guide book very helpful on these two similar species.

No one can turn treasure into trash as easily as I can. Less than a week ago a Red Satyr was my treasure. Today I saw so many at the preserve that I couldn't stand to take another photo of one.

I didn't see any noteworthy odonates, but now that I've seen mating Plateau Spreadwings, I can feel that my life is complete.

Here is a shot of the female. To me it doesn't look like the female in the above photo, but what do I know?

Life's coming at me fast

I wore myself out doing the work in the arroyo, so went to bed at 8 PM.....  always a mistake. As happens, I woke up at 3 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. So now I'm really, really tired but trying to stay up until at least 9 PM so I have more chance of sleeping through the night. I'm excited to be going dragonflying with Kelly tomorrow. I'm sure to get lifers, both odes and butterflies.

Banding this morning was a little strange. We started at CMO at 8 AM, on schedule, and my sister and her sons showed up to watch.

Then as they were leaving an hour later, a group of naturalists from the Lower Rio Grande Valley arrived to watch. It was rather like giving a banding presentation twice, back to back. But it was fun. No complaints. Of course, I didn't do anything different. It was Kelly who did the "presentation." He seems to thrive on stuff like that though.

We had the fun of photographing this Neon Skimmer today. 

And this Southern Spreadwing

I saw the skimmer yesterday, but didn't ID it (it didn't perch), and the spreadwing I probably would neither have seen nor ID'd without Kelly. Hopefully, I'll learn these before I develop old age dementia.

Fun arroyo work

Got an unexpected day off from banding so decided to do some much neglected pruning and trail maintenance. After pruning along the road and lower arroyo, I decided to rework the overgrown arroyo trail between the upper and middle dam where we found the swampdamsel a week ago today (see July 21st post).

As usual, I forgot to take a before picture, but vegetation was making it hard to walk down the arroyo. Now that I know it can hold treasures, I wanted it to be more accessible, without reducing the vegetation. Not an easy task. I managed to keep the side pruning to a tiny minimum, and only removed two soapberry saplings from the middle of the path. The soapberries on the edge should grow over and benefit from the thinning, and make better shade for the path.

There was a problematic area where a bush had completely grown over the trail and rather than prune it back drastically, I determined to make the path go around it, which meant modifying a rocky slope. Here's the "after," looking east.

With pick and shovel, I removed the higher portion of the rock protrusion. The old path went under the bushes and across the rocks that you see toward the center of the photo. Those are hard bedrock and very difficult to chip away at, but I got enough of it out in the new section of trail that I can live with it, at least until a flood exposes it and I can chip out more.  (That rock was once volcanic slag.)

Below is the view looking west. As I was taking my pick, shovel, water, camera, and binoculars, from the work site, I had to pass the clump of basketgrass you see on the right side of the photo. Just as I came beside it, where the trail is pretty narrow, I heard the dreaded rattle of a rattlesnake. I know when you don't see the snake you should freeze and not move, but I've never been able to achieve that amount of discipline. I hastily launched myself away from the clump of basketgrass.

When I poked the shovel at the grass, the rattler departed, rattling as it went. On the left of the same photo is a soapberry sapling (somewhat larger than the ones I removed) that I was able to leave. You can see where the trail now curves to the right around the brush. It still goes up over that rocky outcrop, but I reduced its height a good 6 inches or more. And on the very left side of the photo, off the frame, is where we saw the swampdamsel. Here's a closeup of where I still need to whittle another 6 inches from the bedrock in the new section of trail.

And lest anyone is curious as to how one gets into the arroyo, here are the two "entrances."

I know the sunflowers are really wilted in the above photo but if it rains they'll perk up.

You can see what I saw

I love Yellow-breasted Chats. Can't explain why, but they and Bell's Vireos are the two species that feel like indicator species for a healthy riparian Chihuahuan Desert oasis. Chats are so inventive in their calls, and always sound energetic and upbeat. The oasis is replete with them this year, to my great satisfaction.

While traversing a barren area near the oasis I came upon this Globeberry happily clinging to a spindly Catclaw Acacia. Go figure!

Not often do I see a butterfly out in the middle of the water taking a drink.

Monarch

Or Red Saddlebags mating...

Here's a Kiowa Dancer.