We’re spending our holiday right here at home with the puppies. We had a wonderful dinner this afternoon and are relaxing indoors (it’s 105° outside).
We posed for this photo a couple of days ago in the courtyard. Ain’t we cute? Click on the image to enlarge.
The little birdhouse given to us in May of 2012 by our late friend “River Ron” (RIP) fell off of the palo verde tree out front last week. Today, I screwed the broken parts back together and hung it back up. Click on either image to enlarge. Images courtesy of Verna.
One of the little antelope ground squirrels in the area has been making itself a bit of a pest by digging up Verna’s bulbs and roots in the courtyard. Earlier today, I set up the Havahart small animal trap with a piece of bread and peanut butter for bait. It wasn’t more than a half hour later that Cabela let us know the trap had been sprung.
Ever since we unwittingly caught a cactus wren in a rat trap by the trash barrels, it has been our policy to catch and release the pests. We caught this little guy in the courtyard and released it at Tractor Supply, about a mile away. That should work to keep it away from Verna’s garden for a while.
Click on either image to enlarge.
We’re in Hawthorne, Nevada tonight. Verna and I went into the gift shop at the RV park where we’re camped and walked out after purchasing a new hat and a pair of turquoise earrings for her.
Has it really been over a month since we’ve posted here? Been busy with family matters and vacation from retirement. 😉
While we were outside today enjoying the warm spring weather, a turkey buzzard dropped down from its normal higher soaring altitude and buzzed the back yard. I got this shot with my Canon SL1 EOS and the 300mm telephoto lens.
We call them “buzzards,” but the nomenclature “vulture” is more official for Cathartes aura. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
The turkey vulture received its common name from the resemblance of the adult’s bald red head and its dark plumage to that of the male wild turkey, while the name “vulture” is derived from the Latin word vulturus, meaning “tearer”, and is a reference to its feeding habits. The word buzzard is used by North Americans to refer to this bird.
The bird didn’t stay long and swooped away on its quest for desert cadavers. Click on the image to enlarge.
We took a walk after lunch today down the road to the east about 500 feet to the pavement on Mariposa Drive. While we were down there, I snapped a pair of images to make this panorama of the view we see.
At the left in the image is a local hill with natural desert vegetation topped by a saguaro cactus. Moving to the right side of the image, you can see lower Casandro Wash as it flows toward the east. Above that in the intermediate distance is the town water tank next to a cell tower. In the far distance, the Hieroglyph Mountain Ridge dominates beyond town limits.
Click on the image to view the full sized panorama.
