Thursday, March 31…Trip Around The Sun (Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride)

  Walked down to Nutt Road for the last time in 2022.  Saw the Crested Caracara one last time and stopped to grab the trail cams.  The same coyote showed up on the camera…I imagine he thinks he hit the mother lode of free food.  He doesn’t know it yet but he’s back to hunting now. 

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   Just as we were alongside the big water pump today a truck pulled up.  A man got out, walked over to the back of the pump, and suddenly all was quiet.  Thought he was going to do a reading but he had turned the pump off and it wasn’t until he was leaving that we saw the farm logo on the truck door.  So the farm apparently gets to decide when the pumps start and when they shut down.  And shutting down that pump also shut down the pump closer to the camp so they’ve got to be connected somehow.   The three pumps we encounter on Picacho Hwy were started on March 14 and shut off on March 31. So, yeah, a million dollar water bill to the Central Arizona Irrigation Authority doesn’t seem too far-fetched.  

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   Today was our day for packing up: Kim took down his scope and packed it all neatly in the truck and put the rack and generator on the front of the truck.  While the machines were washing and drying our laundry, I started packing stuff in the camper.  Freddie and Flossie, the hummingbird feeders, the chairs, air fryer, etc. were securely stored for the ride home.  I have this concern that things will become loose and fall on the bike(s) so I make sure items are secure on the shelves and the cupboards are secured with a bungy cord.  Kim thinks it unnecessary but I don’t want to take the chance of the Instant Pot jumping overboard on top of Zeus.  Just sayin’…..

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   I was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel after my shower, when Kim opened the bathroom door to show me a pumpkin pie adorned with blazing candles spelling out Happy Birthday sitting on the table. I shouldn’t have been surprised because today is my birthday but the sudden appearance of a pie caught me off guard. And blowing out the candles had to wait until I got dressed…by that time the candles looked like someone had been eating them.

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   Also drove out to the owl nest to pull the cell cam.  And took one last opportunity to peek inside the nest with the GoPro.  The GoPro revealed that what I thought was the baby peeking over the edge of the nest was actually a rodent unceremoniously dumped upside down on the nest.  Ewwww!!  

   One egg still hasn’t hatched and I guess I’ll never know when or if it does. 

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   Someone on the Birding page gave me a hot tip on the location of some burrowing owls.  I’d seen articles about them when I was searching for Great Horned Owl information but didn’t pay much attention because I was too geeked about the owl in the nest.  But then I saw a posting on the Birding page from someone who had seen oodles of them; since ‘Cheryl’ was agreeable to messaging people the directions, I asked even though she doesn’t have a clue who I am.  She graciously sent me a very specific hand drawn, albeit not to scale, map of where she’d seen the little critters.  It must be said that these owls weren’t exactly located in our area but since it’d be our last opportunity this trip, we made a plan for tonight. Kim was a good sport about it even though it meant dealing with Phoenix traffic. 

    We parked the truck near the canal on Perrysville Rd. as dusk was settling in and scanned the nearby fields and dirt mounds.  I saw what I figured would be a nest hole in the side of the canal berm and Kim’s eyes were sharp enough to see a color difference along the top of the berm.  Sure enough, it was an owl…then we saw two more.  And one of them was going in and out of the hole I’d seen.  Oh, happy day! Of course, it was tough to get a good clear picture because of the darkening sky and our distance from them but that didn’t stop me from trying.  Managed to get one okay picture but the fact that we found some is what really mattered.  And later this evening someone else messaged me back about a location in Marana so next year it’ll be Game On! in Marana.

Description from the National Wildlife Foundation website:   

*The burrowing owl is a ground-dwelling bird species. This owl's characteristics include long legs, a brown body with speckles of white, and the absence of ear tufts. Both males and females stand about 10 inches (25 centimeters) tall and weigh six ounces (170 grams). The burrowing owl's wingspan is 20 to 24 inches (51 to 61 centimeters).

Information on allaboutbirds.org:

*Burrowing Owls spend most of their time on the ground or on low perches such as fence posts. They hunt close to the ground catching insects and small animals. When alarmed they jerk their bodies quickly up and down. They are active during the day.

*Burrowing Owls live in open habitats with sparse vegetation such as prairie, pastures, desert or shrubsteppe, and airports. In parts of their range they are closely associated with prairie dogs and ground squirrels, whose burrows they use for nests.

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   I didn’t look at today’s 40 Days of Lent challenge until about noon and by that time I realized that I’d already failed at the challenge which was ‘fast’ from the news.  At first I thought “There’s no problem with that because I don’t watch the news.”  HOWEVER, I forgot about the Google news feed which pops up every time I use my phone to do a Google search.  I usually glance through it to see what Google thinks I should know about.  And earlier in the day I had read some of those news blurbs.  But after I saw the challenge I did my best to avoid Google searches on my phone.  What I learned is that I should look at these challenges first thing in the morning.