Last night, I emailed Wild At Heart, a raptor rescue organization which operates in Arizona; I discovered them in my online search for owl sanctuaries. Wild At Heart is responsible for the Burrowing Owl Project, which is designed to relocate burrowing owls that are being displaced mainly due to construction projects. Looking at some pictures on their site, I was fairly certain that we had found one of their rescue locations.
Today, I received responses to my inquiry. First, Eric replied that Wild At Heart had previously done some owl releases in Marana, but since he’s not worked in the Marana area, he couldn’t be sure. He forwarded my inquiry to someone who might know more about the project in Marana. He did mention that there are no other organizations that he knows of that build artificial burrows; these were definitely artificial burrows.
Within an hour, I received a response from Jenohn, the person to whom Eric had forwarded my message. She verified that we did, indeed, find one of their owl relocation fields. There are a couple of volunteer weekends coming up in March that she invited us to participate in. She gave me the email address of Steve, the man in charge of volunteers.
I reached out to Steve, who responded ever so quickly with answers to my questions. We are definitely thinking about pursuing this awesome opportunity.
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No walking for either of us today. Really wasn’t any good reason, except that we didn’t.
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I love the phrase ‘hurkle-durkle’, which first came to my attention as a meme on Facebook. Being skeptical of most of what I read on FB, I looked it up and it appears to be a real thing. The website Scotsman.com verifies it: Does this phrase sound made up? Absolutely. However, it is a real word which appears to have first been used in 19th century Scotland. While it has fallen out of use, to hurkle-durkle is "to lie in bed or lounge about past the point when one should be up and about".
I am a hurkle-durkler at heart. Staying in bed, wallowing in the warmth of the blankets is such a grand indulgence. It's being called a form of self-care these days; I’ve been practicing it for years without knowing that it had a name. Thought it was just considered getting a lazy start to my day. Not so. However, some of the hurkle-durkle sites I found mention that it’s important to distinguish between choosing to stay in bed and not being able to get out of bed. There’s a big difference.
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I have lots of time out here to observe and think about hummingbirds. We’ve had three species coming to our feeders this year: Anna’s Hummingbird, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (male and female) and the Black-chinned Hummingbird. Hoping the orange Rufous Hummer shows up again, too.
In all the reading I’ve been doing about hummingbirds, I’ve come across some interesting facts about them:
*While resting, the average 4-inch hummingbird takes about 150 breaths per minute.
*Hummingbirds have weak feet (how do ‘they’ know this?)
*When they’re sitting, their feet automatically clamp down, but on a smooth perch, they may slip and wind up hanging upside down.
*The average weight of a hummingbird is less than a nickel.
*Their tiny legs are only used for perching and moving sideways while perched. They can’t walk or hop.
*Hummingbirds have no sense of smell. While they can’t sniff out feeders, they do have good color vision. (Again, how do ‘they’ know that hummers have no sense of smell?)
And these two facts, found on the same website, seem to be contradictory:
*A flock of hummingbirds can be referred to as a bouquet, a glittering, a hover, a shimmer, or a tune.
*They are the smallest migrating bird. They don’t migrate in flocks like other species, and they typically travel alone for up to 500 miles at a time
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Read today that the feet/cleats left behind when the Jackie Robinson statue was stolen from McAdams Park in Wichita, KS are being donated to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. We had stopped to see the cleats when driving through Wichita on our way out here, but they’d been removed. The Museum is located in Kansas City, Missouri.
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Went for a bike ride to Coolidge then made the loop that I intended us to make the other day. I got confused on which way to turn the other day, which had us riding into Casa Grande instead of past the fairgrounds to Eloy.
Today we turned the other way and it worked out just as I thought it would the other day.
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A cloudy, cloudy day turned into a cloudy evening/night. No imaging tonight. In fact, if the clear sky chart is accurate, Tuesday will be the next clear night. If we wanted cloudy nights, we could have stayed in Michigan. Just sayin'.....
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