Yesterday a birder from the FB page reached out to me on Messenger wanting to know if I’d mind sharing the location of where I saw the caracara…it’s a bird she’d been wanting to photograph.
Picacho
Hwy is a public road and the nest is located within a fenced off area not far
from a house. Not much of an opportunity
to harass the birds so I had no problem with her knowing where I sighted it.
And anyway it’s a crap shoot as to whether she’d see one because it’s not like
they keep to a schedule. It was pure
happenstance that we saw them.
I don’t have a clue where she’s located but she messaged that someone
had told her that you can only see a caracara early in the morning, like 6 a.m.
early…so she thought maybe she’d have to give up on the idea. My response to that was “I’m not even awake at 6, let alone out walking. No, the three times we saw those birds was
between 8 and 10 a.m.” I offered to meet her to show her the general
area of where I saw them but haven’t heard back from her.
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Last night Kim didn’t image last night so we talked about walking out at Saguaro National Park again but earlier this time…try to beat the heat. Picked
the Roadrunner Trail/Panther Peak Wash Trail...4.3 miles with less than a 300
ft, change in elevation.
The last time we were walking along a wash it was in an open range area.
It became evident that when the cows found the wash to be overgrown and too
difficult to get through, they simply chose to go around the obstacle,
rejoining the path after it had been cleared…thus creating a new path. When we encountered an obstacle we learned to
look for the alternate cow path knowing it would lead us back to the wash…Kim
called it ‘following the wisdom of the cows’.
We did a lot of that today as the wash we had chosen had a number of
places where plants were reclaiming the path. That should have been a clue that
we weren’t on an established trail although truthfully we didn’t care, we were
just out for the exercise and the fun of it.
And we weren’t concerned about getting lost as Kim had started the OnX
app when we left the truck. We could
simply retrace our trail on the app back to the truck…technology’s version of
Hansel and Gretel.
Finally found a trail sign which we followed back to the truck without
have ever stepped foot on the Panther Peak Wash Trail or Roadrunner Trail. And instead of 4.3 miles, we covered a little
over 3 miles but since the majority of the trail we walked was loose sand our
legs were ready to call it quits.
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We got home early enough that I had time to take Zeus to the car wash and then ride the Tom Mix Loop. Sky in the distance looked ominous but there were also big patches of blue sky in the direction I
However, when I turned on the Tom Mix Hwy, I saw
more rain clouds coming over the Catalina Mountains and a dark cloud hovering
over the Picacho area. It had recently
rained near the Tom Mix Memorial because the road had puddles and the smell of
wet earth was in the air but, based on the clouds, it was going to rain again
and soon. I now figured getting wet was
inevitable. And while it did eventually
rain I didn’t get wet…meaning that I could feel it stinging my face, my windshield/goggles
got rain splattered, but it wasn’t enough to make my clothes wet. I was grateful for that. All the while the wind was a force to be
reckoned with also.
Somewhere along Park Link Road I got past the clouds and rode into the
sunshine. Still windy but oh, so nice to
be in the sun. 🌞
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Bird/Critter Update:
* I walked down to the caracara nest
tonight to get the steps and to see if I could get glimpse of the
caracara. It wasn’t there and the
suddenly it was, standing on one of the saguaro arms. Snapped a bunch of pictures then reluctantly
turned back toward camp so I could get back before the sun set.
*Changed
out cards on the trail cams. One camera
isn’t working properly and the other camera yielded multiple videos of a coyote
coming in. According to the camera it
took that coyote about 10 minutes to eat the meat we put out. There was also a video of a packrat coming in
for the apples…I was hoping for a javelina.
*Stopped
at the cell cam on my bike ride and switched out cards. Haven’t gone through all of them yet but I
did which showed that the ravens are continuing to harass the owl, sometimes
just flying around the cactus and other times flying right at the nest. And I discovered that on the evening videos
there are times the owl can be heard hooting.
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Anticipating
a ‘fasting’ challenge I read the 40 Days of Lent text as soon as I got up this
morning so I could start off with a clean slate. It was a good thing I did because today’s
challenge was to abstain from sugar.
Here’s
some insight into how Kim and I think: I was sitting on the couch in the quiet
of the camper when I read the challenge and the thoughts started firing off. Does
that mean just refined sugar or are sugar substitutes in there too? What about natural sugar like in fruit? Am I
going to have to be label checking everything? What about the strawberries? Are
they sweet enough on their own without adding any sugar? Agh! What about the
piggy cookies? Sugar? I’m sure of it but the label is too small to read…if I take a picture of it
maybe I can enlarge it and… So it
went in my brain. Kim got up 10 minutes
later, I told him the challenge and he simply said, “Well, that shouldn’t be
too hard.” Seriously? That’s all you’ve
got?!
Anyway,
this one was definitely a challenge! I
checked ingredient labels and we talked through all our food choices to keep
ourselves accountable to each other. And
I’m looking forward to eating a piggy cookie tomorrow. 😋
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Bike miles today: 97
Total miles: 824
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