Happy oasis

When the oasis is happy, I'm happy. My son and I went down today to service feeders and water. All went smoothly, and the weather was calm and overcast. I'm still not up to speed health-wise so was really dragging after a couple of hours. But I'm happy to report the bear-proof feeder is working perfectly, finally. The birds are all over it, indicating they're getting plenty of seed out, yet in the past six days it looked like less than 20 lbs. had been consumed. That's way less than before the tweaking. Totally bear-proof and doesn't waste seed. All good.

We pumped some water from the rock above ground tank (the one that holds about 11,000 gallons) into the stucco tank because the stucco tank is almost empty. The birds loved the stream it made going into the tank. This photo contains at least seven birds.

The Anna's hummingbird is still present. Hard to believe that in two weeks Lucifers will be back, which to me signifies the beginning of spring. YAY

My dental curse

For more years than I can remember I've talked about my dental curse. Here are a couple of excerpts from old blog posts. This one in 2013: 

Today I had to drive to Odessa to the dentist. Here's how the conversation started after I got into the dentist chair.

Dr: What can I do for you today?
Me: My [implant] bar broke.
Dr: No they can't break. It's not possible. In my 20 years of putting them in, I've never seen one break.
Me: But remember, I told you once that I'm under a dental curse.
Dr: (after looking into my mouth): You're not under a dental curse, you are a dental curse!

And this one from 2014:

I had to go to the dentist in Odessa today. I hate that trip, but one more visit might be the final one. I say "might," because I'm under a dental curse and anything that can go wrong, does.

The last time I saw my dentist 2 weeks ago, he asked if I was excited about getting teeth in 2 weeks. Knowing my history, I wasn't acting excited, I guess, and I replied, "I'm cautiously optimistic." Best I could do.

I hadn't heard anything this week, so called to see if he'd gotten the teeth from the lab yet. I was told that he had a death in the family (his wife's father) and wouldn't be back in town this week. Next week he'll be way backed up. Of course on my first visit to him I warned him about my dental curse. LOL

My plan is to call Monday and implore him to squeeze me in, even if final adjustments have to be postponed to a later date.

The other day I was surprised to look out into our deer-proof fenced back yard to see a Gray Fox eating pecans. Never witnessed that before. I watched him jump the fence when he left.

I finally got to photograph the White-tailed Kite being seen north of Alpine even though it was too far away for a good photo. I try to focus on the good things in life. My mouth doesn't hurt much anymore, so physically I'm good enough, I guess. Shouldn't complain. It's not like one gets old and dies in perfect health!

Additionally, it's hard not to get down about the destruction and overpopulation of our beautiful planet. I read horror stories about it every day. Just this morning someone posted this photo on a local Facebook group about recent damage to a previously pristine hill in south Brewster County. I guess they hope that by publicly complaining, it'll help. It won't. If the rain forests can't be protected, a hill in Terlingua doesn't stand a chance.

Trying to look on the bright side, even if I had my teeth this week, I wouldn't be able to chew normally until my gum heals from the damage that impression-making ordeal made

Tweaking

Too old to twerk, but not too old to tweak. Or watch my son tweak, I should say. LOL We made a short visit to the oasis today to assess the "ground" feeder (the bear-proof one) and hopefully improve its functionality. The birds had gotten some seed out, but not much, after we had filled it only a third full during our previous visit four days ago. However, we need to be able to fill it all the way full in case we can't get down there for a week sometime.

So we emptied the heavy feeder, once again, removed it from its base and stabilizing rocks, and shortened the interior hoods. Not clean cuts like he usually does because it was so difficult to get the proper tools into such a tight space, but I think now the feeder will work perfectly.

In the above photo you're looking down into the tank. The white is the cone that directs the seed toward the ports. Light is shining through the two ports at the top of the photo. They hadn't been shortened when I took this photo. The two hoods on the left and right sides had been cut down. Now the hoods aren't so close to the cone so feed should flow much more freely. We topped off the feeder (80 lbs.), so will see how it looks in a week. I tried to observe while we were there, but I had spread some seed on the ground for the birds while we were working on the feeder and they were feeding only on that. Until it's gone they won't come to the feeder. The hanging feeder is topped off too, so they should be fine until we get back down there.

Here is what was cut off, to give you a better idea.

I'm pleased to report that I'm feeling much better today. Mouth pain not as bad, vertigo gone, and getting a bit more energy. My blood pressure is perfect with the Amlodipine. My plan is to reduce my dosage once I can eat lots of fruit again. I don't expect to ever be able to eliminate the meds totally, but who knows. (In other words, I'm taking 5 mg and my goal is to get it to 2.5 mg.)

After we got back to town, I made my 3rd trip to find a White-tailed Kite that's being seen north of Alpine. No luck again. Gonna try early AM. It's fun looking. Treasure isn't always the result of every treasure hunt.

The first time I chased the kite (Feb.5th) I got a nice photo of a Ferruginous Hawk. So that was fun.

The second time I went with Dale (Feb.7th) and got my best Merlin photo, which was fun too. 

Today was nice weather and with me feeling better, it couldn't have not been enjoyable.

A new feeder glitch

The forever a "work in progress" bear-proof feeder is now BIRD-proof too. Gotta tweak it AGAIN. I didn't know that could happen, but when we got to the oasis yesterday morning the feeder still had the 80 lbs. of seed in it that we had filled it with a week ago. NOT GOOD! (I'm sure the hanging feeder only kept the birds going for a few days.)  Best we can figure out is that when we put the cups below the feeder ports, the birds couldn't get their heads inside the ports to bring the seed down. And maybe having so much seed in it with a large portion of sunflower seeds caused it to pack in too tight also. Whatever, it has to get fixed.  I had not realized what a fine line there was between letting too much seed out and not letting enough seed out. Notice on a commercial feeder there are "hoods" inside at the top of the port holes to keep the seed from all pouring out. 

We did that too. But maybe because our port holes were at the base of the feeder, the seed was being shoveled out by thrashes and whatever. By installing the external cups to contain the seed, apparently it prevented the birds from getting their heads in far enough to shovel out the seed. So, I'm thinking that since  the hoods aren't adequate in our situation, and the cups are needed, we can't have the hoods. Lee would have ground down the internal hoods above the ports if he'd have had his grinder with us. We'll go back Friday and do that.

There's the internal cone too that might be a factor. The hanging feeder, which works great, doesn't have internal hoods over the ports, but does have a cone. However, its port holes are a bit smaller. Maybe with external cups the hoods aren't needed. I hate that it's so much work for Lee. The bottom line seems to be that in our situation, we can't have the internal hoods. Scary to remove them, and find out we needed them, so the plan is to just modify them to be smaller. Fingers crossed. Just removing the feeder from its stand to work on is a big undertaking. (Have to remove the stabilizing rocks and lift the heavy feeder off its stand, after emptying the seed out.)

I woke up yesterday morning with vertigo and still have it today. Am able to keep it under control with Meclizine, but really dragging, especially watering yesterday. My mouth pain is lessening a little. I do think the vertigo is related to the Herpes Simplex sores I'm dealing with.  I'm sure I caught it at the dentist's office. It'll be with me for life now. And what ever other symptoms it causes, maybe my tinnitus and essential tremors, which seem to have worsened since I got it. (Herpes lives inside the nerve cells.) I did have the H Simplex years ago*, but not since the cocktail of antivirals I took for the Hep C. I was so thrilled when it got rid of the herpes, knowing I'd never have to deal with it again. But little did I "know." And not having it for over a year (even through 3 torturous dental surgeries), probably weakened whatever immunity I had to it, so it really whammed me. I will recover, and more than 50% of the world deals with herpes, so I shouldn't complain.

A nice male Anna's Hummingbird has been occasionally visiting my Alpine yard.

If all goes according to plan, I'll have teeth within 10 days. Soon it'll be spring and I'll be a whole new person. 

___________________________

*Throughout my life I've spent endless hours in the hands of dentists, and in my poorer days, many not very hygenic. Most likely that's where I got the Herpes Simplex in the first place. As for the source of the Hep C, it had to have been from a blood transfusion I got 50 years ago before they screened for it. I'll never know for certain, but I never used drugs. Not ever, not once. Not marijuana or anything. I recall having a bad allergic reaction to the transfusion, but may not have been related, other than to show the blood hadn't been thoroughly tested.

I had a friend who a mere twenty years ago had a blood transfusion after a car wreck and got HIV from the transfusion and died from it, so I'm very lucky.

Crazy yesterday!

Too exhausted last night to blog, but here goes. I had Alpine doctor and Ft Stockton dentist appointments in the same day. The doctor was running late for my 8:30 AM appointment so I was crunched to get to my 12 PM appointment in Ft Stockton with the dentist. (My dentist appointment had originally been for 3 PM, but he had to move it up and skip his lunch due to an emergency in his family.) Turned out he was running late too, which is most unusual for him. He had squeezed too many people in before having to catch a plane flight. But I didn't know that, so ate my lunch while driving. Using the term "ate" to mean my diet of mush. Hadn't eaten anything before then since I expected the Dr. to check my blood sugar. Had a difficult experience at the Dr., with a nurse, which I'll spare you the painful details. The good news is my Dr. said it was alright for me to reduce the dosage on the Amlodipine as long as I monitored my BP and increased it if it went too high. This morning it's perfect, so good there.

Early yesterday morning when I had tried to check my emails (lots of birders contacting me about oasis visits for upcoming spring migration), my computer wouldn't work. Just made an alarming beep.  So on my way to Ft Stockton, I dropped it off at my grandson's work for him to fix. While driving to FS, he told me by phone that it was working fine. Dentist did final fittings for teeth, which I'll get as soon as the lab makes them, hopefully in two weeks. Good there.

Back in Alpine I picked up my computer, rushed home to plug it in. Hurrying because if it didn't work and my grandson needed to come by, he could do it after he got off work, which is closer to my house than he lives. That gave me less than 30 minutes to see. I couldn't get it hooked up in place, had to pull it back toward me to see the connections. Hunching over hurt my back so I picked up my heavy computer, intending to sit in my desk chair as I did the hookups. As I sat back down into my chair, it rolled out from under me. I fell to the floor with the computer on top of me. I was lucky to end up with no more than a goose egg on my elbow.

When I finally got the computer hooked up, it still didn't work. Too late to call my grandson, but my son Eric, not as expert on computers, came over. He couldn't figure it out, but it worked for him. After he left I noticed the H key was sticking. My grandson had told me if it didn't work, to hook one thing up at a time to isolate the problem, but I hadn't done that. Anyway, grandson came over with a new keyboard and all is well. No broken elbow. I feel great other than the sore in the back of my mouth. Dentist called it a "shiner."

Also yesterday, my sister's book came out. I missed the ceremony, but when I got home she had left a copy for me at my house.

Andrea (Ann to me) had been an archeologist in New Hampshire when she moved next to me (near the oasis) on a piece of land that I had sold her. In between building her house she worked for the Center for Big Bend Studies as an archaeologist, starting in 1996, while finishing her degree in Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire.

Most of her work was done at Middle Archaic sites throughout the region. She started her book in 2009 and finished it in 2014. It took 10 years before it finally got published. Long story there too, that I'll spare you. Basically, it's a comprehensive synthesis for researchers, a compilation of all that has been learned about the period of 3,000 to 4,500 YBP (years before present) in the Trans-Pecos region. It's not a book to read unless you're doing serious research on the subject. I will never read it. Here's an example of typical pages.

My husband is on his 3rd day of a 4 day fishing trip to the Rio Grande River at Black Gap (adjacent to Big Bend National Park). He lives to fish and hadn't been fishing for 6 years, he claims. I don't think it's been that long. Maybe. I know it's been at least 3 years though. His bad fall a couple of years ago slowed him way down. He no longer can go alone, and couldn't find anyone to go with him before now.

Son to the rescue ... AGAIN!

Lee and I went to the oasis today to install the cup-trays onto the bear-proof ground feeder. I'm confident that now it's even more bearproof than it was! Love it!

Here are the new trays after he made them.

Here he is in the process of welding them on.

And here's the finished product.

When we arrived early this morning the feeder was empty, so the birds were quite frantic during the welding. When we finally got the feeder reinstalled, and the paint touched up, birds swarmed in. Here are a few photos. (There are so many doves and White-crowned Sparrows that the seed hadn't lasted long enough.) We filled the tank with 80 lbs. of seed, and now with the efficient tray-cups below the ports, that should make an appreciable difference.

As for the broken sprinkler, Lee fixed it. He thinks the breaks were caused by water inside freezing. From now on, we'll drain it after use during the winter. 

A week ago the oasis got a nice soaking .3" of rain. It came at a good time because I had just spread the new mulch. The rain helped to settle it down, and now to keep the ground from drying out as fast.

As for my health update, I feel fine except for the sores in my mouth. Blood pressure wouldn't go down so my doctor started me on BP meds (Amlopidine), which is the same thing my sister, brother, and husband all take. I'm confident that will do the trick. My foot isn't hurting as bad, so hopefully, it'll be better soon. I'm thinking that climbing in and out of my husband's high pickup on the days I got the mulch and then went to the oasis with Lee to spread it, even though I tried to do it very carefully, may have stressed the navicular bone in my left foot. Although only the right one was previously broken (my conclusion), the left one hurt pretty bad too. So now that left one may have gotten re-stressed somehow.  But I'm optimistic this year will be a good year.

A bleak week!

In a recent visit to the oasis I discovered something, surely a bear, had demolished my wonderful custom made (by Russ Rogers) water sprinkler. My son is going to rebuild it at some point.

Right now he's working on welding cups to the bear-proof seed feeder ports. Birds are shoveling seed out onto the ground, plus bears can get some out of it. This improvement should save on seed and reduce on unwanted partakers of it. In the next blog I'll post photos of the process. (He's just making the cups now.) Everything is always a work in progress, it seems.

I've been having a rough month between wintry weather and dental stuff. Surely, I'll get teeth next month. Meanwhile, my blood pressure is way too high. I attribute that to not eating apples. All my life I've eaten lots of apples and had low blood pressure until I was around 50. Thereafter, it's been normal until just recently. Now it's like 160 over 100. I'm forcing myself to put apples in the food processor and eating them, even though it makes them brown (think bruised) and yucky. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for Thursday, Feb 1st. I'm sure I'll get put on BP meds. Also, yesterday I woke up with my foot hurting so bad that I can only limp around painfully. No idea why. (It's not the same foot I had a cracked navicular bone in last year.) No other symptoms. Maybe a pinched nerve in my back or somewhere.

And I have painful sores in my mouth. Last Wednesday was another agonizing dentist visit, as all have been. He made impressions, but they don't just lift off the implants straight up, as the implants are slightly angled. He ended up having to drill through the mold into the implant abutments and unscrew them to get the casting off, only after I could no longer endure the pain. Really injured my mouth, which bled freely as I thought my jaw was being broken. But the dentist assured me it wasn't, and he was right. This too shall pass. At the moment, even eating my diet of mush is painful. So January isn't a great month. Just as well there are no good birds to see. I wouldn't be up to chasing them anyway.

Here's a podcast that talks about birding the oasis last May. I'm really looking forward to spring migration. And teeth. And warm weather. It'll seem like a new lease on life! Time flies by, so it'll be soon!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0iCLdLwPbUd5w8YuhArKmX

Spring is getting closer

Thanks to one of my wonderful blog followers who lives here in Alpine, my husband's big pickup is filled with pine mulch. Thanks Mike!

Lee will take it to the oasis in a few days and unload it. Pine needles make such good mulch. They don't blow away like leaves do.

My sister had a couple of mountain lions visit her water feature near the oasis two nights ago.

Today at the oasis

Since today seemed like the weather might be the least bad day for a while (past and future), I went early to water and service feeders. I've been experimenting with a feeder heater.  The terrible recent winds seem to have left what should have been a nearly full feeder empty, so today I put up a bigger, heavier feeder. If it's empty when I get there next time, I'll just abandon the project. Another problem I'm having with it is I can't hang it without tilting it, which causes the solution to gurgle. That makes it accessible to bees. Not being there to monitor it, I can't say for sure whether wind or bees or both were the problem, but I tried again. We'll see.

While I was watering I checked the water level in the reservoir of the water feature. Looking into the access hole, I saw at least two dead mice floating in the reservoir. When fishing them out with a stick didn't work, I crammed my hand through the opening, reached way down into the water and pulled the stinky slimy things out. YUCK! I have no idea how they got in there, but knowing mice, I shouldn't be surprised.

Almost had a camera catastrophe today, too. I carry my binos and camera around while I water, but took them off from around my neck to get down on hands and knees while fishing for mice. Afterwards, when I went to put them back on (I have to do the binos first so I can use either rapidly if need be), I grabbed the binos from the viewing counter, but the dangling strap yanked the camera off the counter as I did it. Somehow, I managed to catch the camera mid-air without it hitting the ground. That would have been devastating. More so because I'm still stressing over my phone deciding to factory reset itself all out of the blue. Must be a glitch in some system, somewhere. Had to download all my apps, and still haven't gotten my email accounts to where I can check them online. Or ebird, and who knows what all else. It's a nightmare for me. If it happens again I'm going to get a new phone.

Here are a few photos from today. First is the small oak thicket beneath the biggest Live Oak tree. It's a little thicket that has attracted several rare warblers in the past (Worm-eating, Cerulean, Grace's, etc.). Well, no warblers at the oasis yet this year, but the thicket made a bunch of acorns this winter. I wonder what will find them this time of year.

Next is a weird thing I saw happen. As a Hermit Thrush seemed to be posing for me, I rapidly shot photos of it, always hoping for a good sharp one. All within a moment in time, it regurgitated a berry (probably mistletoe) and swallowed it again. Here's the action I caught. Didn't get the split-second regurgitation. Never saw anything like that before! (Photos are in chronological order, seconds apart.)

Several Ruby-crowned Kinglets must have been having territorial disputes. At least one had its red crown showing every time I looked.

The potential hybrid Anna's x Costa's Hummingbird is still present, but I imagine it won't be for long.

I got back to town before dark, exhausted.

UPDATE: Hummer eventually declared an Anna's by experts.

Crazy January

Never would've thought dalea would be blooming in January at the oasis. This photo by my son.

Wright's Dalea (Dalea wrightii)

Not to mention all the other great flowers my niece has been photographing lately, such as this Yellow Trumpetflower (Tecoma stans), bleached around the edges, from frost perhaps.

 

 And yesterday she photographed a spring form of Checkered White butterfly. Days are getting longer.

In Alpine I saw the juvenile Allen's Hummingbird again yesterday after not having seen it since mid-December. (First seen mid-November) 

Sure never know what to expect in this part of the country!