Determination

I was determined to come to CMO and have fun taking photos. So I did, even though there was nothing interesting to shoot. Had to settle for borderline interesting.

After downloading my 150 pics and deleting most, I kept this one because I hadn't realized how much better my sickliest madrone looks since I put that little terrace beside it last year. The bird I was photographing in it is a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. They over-winter at the oasis every year.

On the subject of plants, the cenizo (Texas Ranger) doesn't bloom no matter how much water I give it. Then we get a mere .15" of rain and it blooms beautifully. So frustrating. It shows there's something else in fresh rain water versus the old rain water I give them that they need.

I lost track of how many Butterfly Bushes I bought that didn't survive. This one is small but so far looks healthy. It even put on a bloom. It survived last winter. I think if it survives this coming winter, it'll be good.

While wandering around looking for butterflies I spied this cactus. Since today is one of my sisters' birthday I was thinking about my sisters. I thought, "there we [we three that live here] are with our kids." (Yes. I do talk to my plants, but rarely out loud.)

But there's another sister that just winters down here. "Too bad she's not on the cactus," I thought. And lo and behold, I walked around to the side and there was a fourth "sister." How weird is that!

It has been exactly 3 months since the oasis has had any appreciable amount of rain. Sometimes I just have to focus on what is right in my life and minimize what isn't. A lot to be grateful for. This pesky Rock Squirrel isn't one of the things I appreciate, but it held this pose for so long that I finally relented and snapped a few photos of it.

Saw my first White-crowned Sparrow for this season. They over-winter here, too. This one is probably the oriantha subspecies because of its orange-ish bill. And it's a juvenile, so is harder to ID.

I get confused because different author's call them different names. There's the Taiga per Sibley, and Oriantha or Leucophrys per Jon Dunn (Birding magazine June1995), etc. 

Finally, saw my first of season Hermit Thrush. Summer's come and gone, rainlessly. Tomorrow's another day. Planning to do Lajitas.

UPDATE: Kelly corrected me on the sparrow ID. Orange bill /gambelii;  pink bill / oriantha. As usual, when I have a 50-50 chance of getting it right, I get it wrong.

Wintering birds starting to arrive

Saw the first Green-tailed Towhee for the season. I love them and they spend the whole winter. Here's a year-round species, Greater Roadrunner, that is making herself right at home in the walkway.

Alas, I had my camera settings wrong for most of today, so when it clouded up none of my pictures were sharp. I normally leave them on one setting but had recently been experimenting and forgot I had done that. I think this next photo is an Allen's Hummingbird, but without a sharp spread-tail shot, can't be sure. You know that didn't happen.

The Chinese Pistachio tree has a lot of berries on it that are ripening.

And one Chinkapin Oak had all the ripening acorns missing. No damage to any limbs so I'm sure it was a bird,  probably Western Scrub Jay. Maybe I'll see it tomorrow. Got here rather late in the day today to see much.

Still a fair number of odonates hanging out. Probably the only water for miles around. I finally got the coveted side shot of a Pale-faced Clubskimmer. I'm kicking myself that I still had the camera ISO wrong when I photographed it. Such an opportunity lost. I'm thinking this is a juvenile male, but not sure.

I still remember around 20 years ago when my sister-in-law, Dale Ohl, and I drove to Balmorhea to get our lifer Eurasian Collared-Dove. They were just expanding into the area. Now they are "junk" birds everywhere, including CMO. Perched near the feeders, waiting for me to fill them.

I'm real weak on lizard identifications. Only photographed this one because it was posing nicely and that would give me a chance to use my new Texas lizard guide. I think it's a Southwestern Fence Lizard, maybe a subspecies of Eastern Fence Lizard. Very common here.

Accidental lifer

Stuck in town I decided to practice photographing damselflies with my Lumix camera. So while out by the ponds doing that, I saw what I thought was a common butterfly land that I figured I'd practice on, too. Later, I sent Brian the photo and discovered it was a Clouded Skipper. He has seen that species at the oasis before, but I hadn't, to my knowledge. If I have seen it before I probably thought it was a Northern Cloudywing or something similar.

Other than that, a real boring day.

Long hard day

I needed to water the oasis but neither of my tank pumps would work. They go into the pressure tank so watering is fast. So it took me all day to rig up another old broken pump, that ever so slowly produced water, to get things even sparsely watered. Then to town. I need to get a new fuse for the one pump switch box. If that isn't the problem then I'll have to get my son to go down and install a new pump.

At least while water was slowly trickling, in between moving the hose I got to watch birds. There were lots of warblers. And also I used less water than I otherwise would have, which might become an issue in six months if it doesn't rain in the meantime.

The only overwintering species to arrive so far are the Ruby-crowned Kinglets.  It didn't take long after I filled the sunflower seed feeder before a squirrel was trying to get to the seeds.

The moon was still awesome tonight so I stopped along the highway and snapped a couple shots of it in all its golden glory.

Day of the Moon

The prehistoric people of the Big Bend, ancestors to today's Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, called night "the day of the moon."* Seemed fitting this evening with the spectacular eclipse. I did my darnedest to get decent photos. There are great ones online so with my first hand sighting and their photos I have a pretty lasting impression of it. The evening started with a lovely sunset...

Soon followed by the moonrise....

And then the real show began..

I keep forgetting to post a photo of my newly made concrete pad in the viewing area, so I snapped a quick shot of it before dark today. It works better for banding now.

___________________________________

* I'm thinking that to their way of speaking, it would be like "time of the moon vs time of the sun." To us, it's "night-time vs day-time."

Bloom of damselfies

For whatever reason there's a huge increase in damselfly numbers at the ponds in Alpine.

Yesterday at the oasis there were only a couple of hummers left. The previous week it was obvious by their revved up all day activity at the feeders that they were tanking up for departure.

Here's a Canyonland Satyr that I photographed in the Davis Mountains a few days ago. Not a lifer but still enjoyable to see.

Tomorrow evening I'm gonna try to photograph the eclipse with my mountain below it. And by the way, my binoculars dried out and are none the worse for the wetting.

A little peek at sister's house

I bought my property in 1977 and finished my house in 1979. In the early 1990s I sold pieces of my land to two of my four sisters. I'm the oldest. My late husband and I built a rock house for the second sister. She lives in Iowa where we were all born, but usually spends the winters here. (About 5 years ago the third sister, along with her daughter, started a house of their own near my first sister's house.)

This first sister built her house without any outside help (unlike me), all while working as an archaeologist for the Center for Big Bend Studies in Alpine. I dropped by today to take her some tomatoes from our garden and snapped a few quick pics. Didn't give her a chance to straighten up cords, hoses, or anything. She said it's OK to post the photos I took. One can sure dream up a lot of innovative creations given enough time. By comparison, I hired help and rushed through getting mine down. Didn't enjoy the process.

Here is a little of the rock and fortified adobe house that has been 22 years in the making.

That isn't a crack in the walkway, it's an artistic conduit for water to cross the walkway and not puddle there. In the background is the first "module" she built, which is now guest quarters, that she lived in while building the main part of the house.

Above is the doorway into the first module. The main house is off the picture to the right. All this overlooks the arroyo that brings water to my tanks a mile upstream.

Below in the main house is the stairway between dining area and sitting room. Bathroom and kitchen off photo to right.

Above is an interesting section of hallway between the sitting room (which doubles as an extra guest room) and her bedroom. The doorway leads to a patio above the arroyo.

This is the outside of one of the sitting room windows beside that patio. Background is the first module. Notice the arroyo, barely visible on the right, and that far mountain way in the background. My place is on this side of that mountain. You've undoubtedly seen it in the background of many of my photos from the oasis.

And last, for now, here is the bathtub in the main bathroom. She is just finishing it. Temporarily, she had a fiberglass tub there, but finally is doing the finishing up projects. It was very difficult for her to cut out the fiberglass tub so she could tile it. 

There are so many more awesome areas and things in her house that this is just a tiny sample. One of these days I'll take more photos of it. 

Disappointed in myself

It's bad enough to live a life with mild prosopagnosia (face blindness), but lately I've been so absent-minded. The other day I came to town and left my binoculars laying outdoors by the stucco tank. The one time I do that and it's the one time in over 10 weeks we get a little rain. It pretty much ruined them. Lately, every trip to town I forget something at CMO and vice versa.

So today I left my borrowed binoculars in my car from the meeting place with Kelly, then came back to Alpine having left stuff in his vehicle, even after he reminded me. It stresses me out.

Several of us were photographing White-eared Hummingbirds at Kelly's place. I took lots of photos with ample opportunities, yet none are decent shots, my only WEHU pics ever. Frustrating. The bird stayed a distance in the shade and my camera just doesn't take good pics that way. This is the best I got.

I did somewhat better on this AZ Sisters butterfly that was closer to me in the sunshine.

I never cease to be amazed at how drab a hummer's gorget can look one second and totally awesome the next, as this male Rivoli's Hummingbird so nicely illustrates.

As I recall, this hummer had less sunlight reflecting on his throat in the second photo than the first. I believe they somehow adjust their gorget feathers to maximize the reflective and absorptive quality of the feathers.* Here's a description I found online:

The colors do not directly depend on selective pigment absorption and reflection, as do brown and blacks produced by the melanin pigments of non-iridescent feathers. Rather, they depend on interference coloration, such as that resulting from the colors seen in an oil film or soap-bubble

If you haven't already checked out this live cam at a hummingbird feeder at an undisclosed location in the Davis Mountains, be sure to do so.

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/50/West_Texas_Hummingbirds/

_______________________________

* I've repeatedly observed this is other instances and species. For example, I watched a motionless Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, which has a couple deep yellowish patches on the sides of his thorax, when being threatened by another male dragonfly, instantly make those patches turn a bright iridescent yellow-green. Then when the territorial invader moves on, the color turns drab again. 

Davis Mountains Preserve morning

Helped Kelly band hummingbirds at the preserve this morning. Afterwards we walked down to the intermittent creek to check for odes. Storm clouds threatened, so not much flying. The most memorable part of the morning was when I almost stepped on a Black-tailed Rattlesnake as I was walking through the tall grass. It was the largest Black-tailed I've ever seen, and could certainly have bitten me if it had been so inclined.

Well hidden, even while rattling

Side view, still rattling

                         

Front view, still rattling

Here is a Tropical Least Skipper. Not a lifer for me. (See post of Nov 10, 2013)

This next one is an Acmon Blue.

I did get a nice shower at CMO night before last. Not enough to put any in the tanks but good for the parched ground nonetheless. 

Tomorrow I'm going to try again for a photo of the Mexican Violetear.

Routine day maintaining oasis

Daylight today found me on Terlingua Ranch road almost to the oasis.

Upon arriving there I rushed around filling feeders and watering. A Belted Kingfisher is still hanging around but won't ever let me get close for better photos.

Got back to town really late so this is a brief blog post.