Bailing

I didn't stay in Alpine very long before I felt the need to come back to the oasis to do some projects.... like finishing up the tank patching with that asphalt coating stuff. But when I got here it had just rained .2" so I bailed the accumulated water out of the big tank. Then last night it rained .3" so I spent all day bailing it again.

I know I could buy 600 gallons from the lodge for less than $20 and spend a fraction of the time doing it, but I can't bring myself to let that lovely rain water just sit there and evaporate. I transferred it to the other tank to use when I water trees next week.

Tomorrow I hope to finish the patching, unless it rains again in the night and I have more water to bail.

Just as I trudged out of the tank for the final time late this afternoon the phone rang. It was my husband. The first words he said were, "Are you worn to a nub?" He hadn't known what I was doing all day, but I guess he knows me well enough to know it was something grueling. I figure each time I dipped the bucket into the water I scooped up an average of one gallon. So that means I scooped about 600 times. No wonder my shoulder hurts all the time. I took this photo with one hand while doing the water with the other.

Yesterday I ran the water under trees so I don't know exactly how much I bailed out, but based on the 600 gallons I bailed today, I'd say yesterday was around 400 gallons. I figured the trees had enough for now and would appreciate it more next week.

Oh, and lest you think my arm had an easier day yesterday... not! My son had made me a drag for the high center on the road from an old tractor tire. But all it did was shove rocks into the ruts so I had to rake just about the whole mile long road. I retired that old tire.

After I finished bailing today I wanted to count birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. There aren't many birds to count-- I only got 20 species, but it was lovely just sitting on my bench and enjoying the oasis. Something I rarely do because I feel guilty I'm not watering or hauling water or something. But with half an inch of rain the last 2 days I didn't feel guilty.

Since I was sitting under the possibly dead cottonwood tree, I studied it in detail through my binoculars. I'm pretty positive 90% of the tree is dead. I just hope something is alive so I don't have to cut it down. It would be too dangerous to leave it standing past a couple of years. It looked like one twig was getting ready to bloom but without actually climbing high into the tree I can't be sure. If there is some life in the tree I'll just prune off the dead limbs. I'm trying to keep it alive but if it dies I won't be sad. One less water hog. The mulberry beneath it will fill the void nicely in time. The only advantage of the cottonwood is its height. Tall trees fill an important niche for bird diversity. When the cottonwood lost its leaves last year I assumed, like the books say, that it was just its way of surviving drought. We'll see.

I think if I had it to do over again I'd plant white mulberry trees instead of cottonwoods. They grow tall and fast, plus make fruit for the birds. I planted one in Alpine last year and if it thrives I may start a cutting from it for the oasis.

CMO these days

Two days ago we got 15 hundredths of an inch of rain. It was nice to see the ground wet anyway. Yesterday my son and I rode down from Alpine and he installed a new pump in the stucco tank. Then today I painted some asphalt coating on cracks in it.

I feel like the regular patching I use doesn't contract and expand as well with the weather. I didn't finish but got a start. Looks pretty sorry, but once it's full of water it'll look wonderful. The biggest mistake I made when constructing this tank was to stucco it to the bedrock. Now it's one with it. The other tank is totally separate from the ground, even though it's below ground level. It doesn't have this problem as bad.

Some nice clouds late this afternoon and a chance of rain this weekend.

I think one of my cottonwood trees is dead. Normally it's in full bloom by mid-February.

Today there is no sign of life on the tree. Here are a few shots of the oasis today. No interesting birds anywhere. Some birders are coming tomorrow. I warned them that this is the worst birding here ever gets, but they want to just see the place.

This Mexican Elder tree is the greenest thing around. I have a bunch of them I started in pots from cuttings. Soon I'll be planting them. I'm going to put one at the oasis, one in the courtyard at the house, and the rest at my Alpine habitat. I'll post photos of them soon.

Rusty Blackbird in Alpine

A lifer for me. I've been hearing a strange bird sound all month but just yesterday afternoon located this Rusty Blackbird high in a pecan tree. I'm still in Alpine but packed for going south after this post.

Also this Red-shouldered Hawk has been hanging around for a month (ID per Kelly Bryan. I'm bad on hawks.)

Luna's Jacal

I couldn't resist taking a couple of hours this morning to make one last try for the Nutting's Flycatcher. But I think it either found a better place to winter, or got eaten by a predator. I wonder how savvy it is around unfamiliar predators away from its normal range.

On the way back I stopped at "Luna's Jacal." It's impressive that Gilberto Luna, who built the jacal around 1890, lived to be 108 years old. Contemplating that, I noticed he had a view of Santa Elena Canyon from his house. I think I could live that long with the great view, plus eating nothing but home grown food like he and his family surely did. (He died in 1947.)

I'm not sure how authentic the walls and roof are these days but I'm sure the floor was wet and tamped like hard adobe, then swept occasionally. The Mexicans that built my house never slept indoors, so I'm thinking this structure was more for cool food storage than for actual living space.  For one thing, it's earth-sheltered for coolness, has thick rock walls,and no windows. He had a large produce farm and keeping food cool had to be vitally important to marketing it successfully.

Having said that, in an old photo taken in the 1930's there's a bed outside under a ramada attached to the front of the house. And protruding from the roof just inside the entrance of the jacal was a stovepipe. That undoubtedly was for cooking, but would surely have added warmth. Perhaps the cooler back part, by the wall consisting of a huge boulder, was the storage area.

Besides, can you imagine how hot it would be to sleep in there if it was full of warm bodies and no breeze during sweltering summer nights? By some accounts he had 11 wives and fathered over 50 children, but that could be an exaggeration. Some of his "offspring" may have been grandchildren, or poor relatives from Mexico who weren't faring as well. 

And you gotta love the view!

A good day today

My sister-in-law visited the oasis today and right away discovered a Brown Thrasher. I hadn't seen that species here since the spring of 2006, so that was exciting. It was above 70° too, which I loved.

While I was waiting for the thrasher to come into the open for a clear shot, I photographed a Texas Antelope Squirrel AGAIN. But they're so cute I can't resist.

Lesser Goldfinches are here year-round so I seldom bother to photograph them.

CMO rainfall statistics

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, here are the rainfall totals at CMO from 1998 to present.

1998=  7.20"
1999=12.80"
2000=10.80"
2001=  5.20"
2002=  8.60"
2003=  9.85"
2004=23.25"
2005=11.50"
2006=  8.75"
2007=21.25"
2008=  9.40"
2009=12.25"
2010=13.40"
2011=  2.25"

Hauled 2 loads of water today and going to haul one or two more tomorrow.

To Santa Elena Canyon today

My plan was to go there and help birders locate the Nutting's Flycatcher and try for a shot of the flycatcher's open mouth. Sounded like a fun challenge.  

Life is what happens while you're making other plans. Whew! I tried every strategy I could think of to find that nutty bird. I'm positive I didn't miss it; it just didn't show up. Hopefully, tomorrow the birders from today, that are all going back, will find it. I can't go back tomorrow, but plan to on Thursday.

I took the Old Maverick Road to Santa Elena Canyon, as it's much shorter. However, dirt roads are slower...

...but it seems like the canyon is getting closer.

It is getting closer, isn't it?

Now why was it I agreed to drive the low-clearance town car?

I gotta be almost there, don't I? (It does look closer through my telephoto lens.)

Ah, my destination, at last.

Now the waiting game. I walked, I waited, I bushwhacked, I waited some more....

Buses loaded with teenagers came and went. Finally, I gave up the quest after the sun set behind the canyon wall. It disappeared around 3:30, I left around 5:00.

Wonderful scenery, wonderful companionship, how can I complain?

Mexican Blue Oaks

Until someone mentioned today in a previous post comment about my relict oaks, I had forgotten that I had promised to post photos of ours. I searched all my files and could only locate this photo (filed under Lucifer Hummingbird nests, would you believe?). If I can't find better ones, I'll take some in the spring. The second photo is a close-up from the first photo. There are probably a dozen of the oaks there of various sizes, the tallest being maybe 15-20,' but I'm not a good judge of height. Lucifers nest in that area.

Here they are from a greater distance.

Probable Nutting's Flycatcher

Today was an exciting day. Dale Ohl (my sister-in-law) and I rode down to Santa Elena Canyon with Kelly Bryan. We got there early. We were there hoping to find a probable Nutting's Flycatcher reported and photographed from there. Other birders had been looking unsuccessfully since daylight. Apparently, the bird doesn't forage until the sun comes out and insects become active. After about an hour of about ten people spreading out searching, I located the bird as it began foraging across from the rest rooms, one of its favorite haunts. A birder from Virginia had gone hundreds of miles out of his way just to see this bird. He just happened to be the person closest to me when I spotted the bird, so I called to him in a loud whisper that I had the bird, "get Kelly." Bless his heart, he took off in the opposite direction of his coveted sighting, without so much as a glimpse of the bird, to get Kelly. When Kelly arrived, everyone then gathered around quietly while Kelly recorded the sound. As luck would have it, after the first call Kelly's recorder broke. Not knowing that, I was stopping cars and asking people to turn off their engines so he could get quality recording. However, the flycatcher didn't vocalize again all the while we were there. That didn't prevent everyone from getting ample looks and photos.

All that saw the bird agree it must certainly be a Nutting's. But until the record committee rules, we can't count it. It didn't forage the same as the only other option, an Ash-throated Flycatcher (ATFL). I felt the tail looked too rufous for an ATFL, and the belly was too yellow. Not to mention that ATFLs usually vocalize (a different call note) freely. Too much brown on the top of the head and rufous on the rump for an ATFL. The jizz just wasn't the same.

 I didn't really work at taking good photos. Kelly takes better shots than I do and he was there taking lots of them. I socialized with old friends (and made new ones) more than I would have if documentation would have depended on me.

I took a few photos just because I could.

UPDATE: Eventually confirmed as a Nutting's.

More on relict trees

A reader of my previous post asked me some questions about relict trees on my property. So I thought I'd go into a little detail here. A relict tree, or group of trees, is a species that was once plentiful in a given place and is now extinct except for one specimen, or a small population of them. In that category, the dead juniper was probably the last holdout of its species due to the continuing desertification of this region. There are two other species that are still alive here, but of relict status. One is a small cluster of Mexican Blue Oak that are gone from the Big Bend area except for a couple of small stands. My patch is high on the slope above my oasis. I'll post some photos of them when I get them from my Alpine computer. I hope this drought hasn't killed them.

Interestingly, Lucifer Hummingbirds favored nesting places are cholla, high on slopes, near oaks. That's the only place where we've seen their nests on my property. I wish it wasn't such a rough climb, or I'd go up there more often. (refer to post of June 30, 2010 for nest photos)

The other relict species here is one small cluster of Faxon Yucca. Again, I hope the drought doesn't impact them. Here's a photo from today.