Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. It's been a while since we have done that. We've spent the last several years on the road and camping. We usually take advantage of the time Christian has off and go out into areas where, hopefully, others will think it is too cold to go out to but not too cold for us to camp still, trying to find some peace and quiet. I think that it wasn't too successful last year. In fact, it hasn't been very successful in a while now. There is no getting away from people anymore. They are just saturated everywhere. With the TJ still out of commission, we haven't bothered to get out to more than a day trip to a local spot. 

Christian has been too burnt out to work on the Jeep, so it's just been sitting there. 

This year, both of our nephews on my sister's side was planning to bring their girlfriends. We haven't met any of them. I believe one came last year, but we didn't make it. So that something we wanted to make time for.

That was interesting. It was nice to catch up with everyone. Unfortunately, my sister's house doesn't have a lot of good lighting, so I struggled to get useable shots. 

My sister is taking my mom on a cruise next month. They are going to make their rounds to a number of asian countries along the way. Tommy is setting off to Asia on his own trip, meeting up occasionally friends and my mom and sister along the way. We won't be seeing any of them next month, especially since we have our own plans to visit the girls during the holidays anyway.

November

It's been a long month. Christian spent half of it either sick or fighting some sickness. He had to take several days off as well, so we haven't really done that much this month. We've continued our birding locally. 

We've taken walks to the base of the Box Springs Mtns. 

We saw a surprising amount of birds on our short walk (along with some non-birds). You may not even notice them if you aren't paying that much attention (or don't have a long lens/binoculars). Not all of them are that easy to find or see otherwise. 

There are quite a few hawks in the area. They are mostly Red-shouldered Hawks and Red-tailed Hawks. I've seen as many as three generally flying in the same area, usually being harassed or flanked by Ravens or Crows. I've even heard a Cooper's Hawk one morning but have not been able to see it around here yet.

During the week of Christian's Thanksgiving break, we took a walk over to the UCR Botanical Gardens. They are closed the last time we attempted it but since this was during the middle of the week, we figured we might as well take the opportunity to go.

We used to always love going to the Botanic Gardens. We have many memories of it from when Christian and I went to UCR and throughout when the kids were growing up but I can't say that it held any real nostalgia or sentimental value when we finally went back. It just doesn't have the same feeling anymore. The loud obnoxious people certainly didn't help. Plus, I didn't really find any new birds. We were on the track of a raptor of some sort when some loud idiot went through and scared it away. The only thing I found unusual there was this Leucistic Yellow-rumped Warbler.

That was an interesting find. I thought we found a new kind of bird initially, but it definitely had all the other markings of a normal Yellow-rumped Warbler.

It was a long walk to and from campus. Plus we were there for quite a long time. By the end, we were super hungry and tired and pretty disappointed with the whole day.

My favorite picture this month is still just in my own front yard...and is still a hummingbird.

Garden

We spent another month fighting the weeds, gophers and donkeys from destroying our yard. I have resorted to chemicals to kill some the bermuda grass trying to take back my planting area. I keep digging up bermuda grass and if there is even a small chunk of rooting material left behind, it sprouts and spreads all over again. I am losing the fight. The gophers continue to make tunnels disrupting my watering wells and helping the spread of weed grass and no matter what barricades we put up, the donkeys seem desperate to get into our yard to ravage and destroy everything in sight. We don't understand it as lots of neighbors have some of our same plants out in the open and the donkeys leave them mostly unmolested. Sometimes they will go in the neighbors yards to nibble on the grass, poop or roll around on their lawns but I don't see major damage to their areas. Maybe I am not looking close enough but somehow I don't think so.

This month, they got back into our yard and destroyed half my dwarf orange tree once again. It has been something like three years since I have been able to get any fruit from it. It is just hanging on to dear life and then recovering enough to start growing and fruiting again until the donkeys come in to destroy it once again. This time they even got into our back yard and destroyed my dwarf lemon tree. It doesn't want the fruit, it just eats the leaves and tears the branches off by the mouthful and everything that comes with it. Now my lemon tree looks like someone took a couple of swipes with a weed wacker to it. It nimbled on several other trees and plants, including my roses, but my lemon and orange tree took the biggest hit. Of course, it left big holes in the softened soil from the recent rains everywhere and piles of poop I now have to shovel, both in the yard and my driveway.

In addition, it pulled down and broke my bird seed feeder in my driveway! I think it attempted to pull down the suet feeder in my front lawn as well, but was unable to do anything more than stretch the line it is hung from. The bird seed feeder is a lot more delicate. Plus the birds had just found it and was flying around wondering where there seed was, scrounging around on the floor picking up the bits that were left scattered on my driveway.

The damned donkeys act like we are the only source of food in the area for miles and are determined to come in when in fact, we are surrounded by houses everywhere, most of which, are not gated and some idiots even invite them in by leaving out, or even hand feeding them, carrots, pumpkins and put out buckets of water for them. One even went out and got a watering trough for them!!! A few neighbors have had to put up gates around their property. Others have put up the flimsiest of barricades. I can't even believe that those work for them because it certainly wouldn't work for us! Others seem to just get left alone for whatever reason and other's couldn't care less about their yard anyway. They have destroyed many mail boxes as they use them as scratching posts.

Anyway, I digress...I mostly wanted to post about the birds and the success (and failures) of some of our feeding stations.

The suet feeder is the only one that doesn't seem to be working. I'm not sure why yet. Maybe I have to try some different suet or move it. I need to have it re-hung anyway since the donkey stretched out the line and it is now hanging too low.

We also put up a second hummingbird feeder, hoping that the Anna's Hummingbird that protects it will be less aggressive if there is more food available...it hasn't. Now we hope it will tire him out trying to protect both so that it will give the other hummingbirds a chance to sneak in and get drinks. There is a fairly aggressive Costa's Hummingbird that is always contending with him. Personally, the Allen's Hummingbirds are our favorites. They are just beautiful and seem less aggressive but are not around as much. I'm not sure if they hang out elsewhere most of the time or if they are repelled by the other two factions!

I really like the new spot for the second hummingbird feeder though. It lends itself to much better pictures. 

The background is much nicer than the side of the garage or my ugly kitchen window. Most of the birds are still pretty skittish around us though. They will fly away as soon as we walk out the door. It will take quite some time for them to come back to the feeders afterwards. We have to be out there for quite a while before they do and we still have to be somewhat stealthy to get pictures of them. The hummingbirds are actually the boldest. They will fly away if you are actively moving into their area but after they get used to you, they will fly down to take drinks even if you are standing somewhat close to the feeder still. 

I want to get a few more bird friendly plants but am a little reluctant to put any more into my garden when the donkey's can still get in and destroy everything if we aren't extra vigilant. You can go out and chase them off during the day if you notice them, but they sneak in in the dead of night sometimes so not much can be done in that case. They have woken me up many times as the stomp around on my driveway or garden. We need to come up with a better moveable barricade. Right now, we are parking our cars across our driveway and putting up our trash cans in order to deter them. We have the fence that Christian put up a few months ago still to block off our garden from the driveway, but they have still been able to find the weaknesses to get in here and there.

Newport Coast

My family hasn't gotten together all at the same time for a while, they were trying to get us all to go on a vacation together but it's hard to coordinate with everyone's schedule. Then, earlier this year, my brother had his stroke and wasn't able to do much. After months of physical therapy and everything, nothing much has helped. My sister decided to get a timeshare nearby so we could "get away" a bit and spend some time together. She was going to get her usual Palm Springs resort over the summer while the girls were still in town but no one seemed that interested or had the time to drive out there to be stuck in some condo like place in that kind of heat. She tried to find a place near the beach but they were all booked up until now.

She got the place for a week but no one was really able to go for that long. Everyone is back to work and only had the weekend. She headed over early with my mom and they hung out there themselves, taking walks on the beach and seeing the tide pools. Tommy was in and out and had to fly back briefly to work. When he came back, he picked up my brother and niece who took Friday off to enjoy a little more time there. Christian and I headed over late that evening after Christian got off work. He was too exhausted to go earlier, so he took a nap after work and we had dinner before heading over as well. 

The place sits above Crystal Cove. They have trams that take guests down to the beach there or Laguna Beach on and off all day. My mom took Norman and Lauren down to the beach I guess briefly on Friday. Then, Tommy and Wendy taught Lauren how to play pickle ball.

Christian and I got up early and walked down to Crystal Cove by ourselves to go birding. There was a surprising amount of people already at the beach and really, all over the streets. It was not exactly quiet or relaxing. We didn't make it very far down the beach. We took our time taking pictures and videos of whatever birds we could find.

The little sanderlings are always the neatest but they dart around so much it is difficult to get a good picture of them. There were a ton of brown pelicans and they were the easiest to take pictures of because they are big, abundant and move a lot slower compared to the smaller birds. The most interesting bird we got was actually just a Heerman's Gull. It came down and was flailing around in the waves and totally got bodied by the waves several times before making it out. He was very unsteady afterwards. We didn't know if he was old and dying or hurt from the crashing around in the waves or just drunk. It eventually recovered at least somewhat but it was very dramatic watching him. 

Eventually, we decided to head back to see what everyone else was planning to do for the day but on our way back, we ran into a hawk flying around and we chased down several smaller birds in the chaparral. 

By the time we got back, Tommy had left again to see his mother and meet up with his sister. Everyone else was up and had gotten breakfast. We made a few plans and headed out again after lunch. We took the tram back down to the other side of Crystal cove. Christian wasn't feeling that well and stayed behind.

It was just as well that he didn't not come with us because the tram takes you to the most crowded part of the beach, where all the shops and restaurants are. It was crowded and there were not a lot of birds. We only spent an hour or so there before heading back to meet with Christian and to take the tram to Laguna Beach. Our niece wanted to go to some of the museums there. My mom was tired and stayed at the resort. My brother went with Lauren and the rest of us went down to the beach. It was even more crowded here. Not sure if it was just because it was later in the day or if the beach is always more crowded. There were as many people milling around as when I went to the beach over the summer with the girls.

We took some pictures of all the Brown Pelican's and Brandt's Cormorants on Pelican or Bird Rock and the tide pools. 

Afterwards, we headed back to the resort. We were pretty tired and hungry. We planned to celebrate Christian's birthday that evening even though his birthday is technically not until the next day. Christopher drove out to join us just for the evening. Christopher, Tommy and his sister took the opportunity to play pickle ball at the facilities while we worked on dinner. I had baked a simple portable cake on Friday before we came. I brought some extra caramel to drizzle over it and some candles but no matches. No one had a lighter so we did without. Christopher decided to decorate the cake a bit but I think the caramel was a little too thick to flow well. He ended up writing "HBD" and drew some stick birds flying in the air. It was hilarious because you can barely tell what anything was. Since the caramel was somewhat thick, he tried to make a caramel candle but it fell and turned into something more akin to a caramel turd. The important thing was that the cake tasted good!

After dinner, some of us went for a walk. Wendy took us for a tour of the facilities there. We went to the gym and attempted to play ping pong! Christopher left to go back home. Wendy's place really isn't that far and he opted to drive back to get a better night's sleep in his own bed. Which was a wise choice as the place was packed and kept way too hot.

The next morning, Christian and I got up early once again and headed back out to the beach but we never made it. We got distracted chasing little birds on the grounds. We also kind of bush wacked our way onto the golf course. Luckily, no one was really out playing. We did run into one of the grounds keepers but he was friendly and didn't seem to mind us being there.

All-in-all, we got 10 "lifers" over this weekend. We are racking up quite a list since we started a couple of months ago when I got my big zoom lens. We did count a few of the birds we've taken pictures of and can identify in our picture catalogue. Some birders will even count birds they can hear and not see, as long as they can identify them. We've decided to count only the ones that we are able to capture on camera and catalogue. They don't have to be great pictures, but they do need to be recognizable! Afterwards, we still hope to get better pictures of them all when we find them as we are photographers first and foremost.

Since it was getting late, we decided we had better hurry back to help pack up and clean up as we were supposed to check out soon. Even though Christopher took some things home for them, they still had more stuff than they could fit in their one car because Tommy picked up Norman and Lauren up separately with their luggage. We were really only allowed two cars in total at the resort and since it was all booked up, we had to both park on the other end of the resort in the parking garage. Tommy had offered to take everyone out to lunch for Christian's birthday to a Hong Kong style cafe that we had talked about the evening before. So we put most of the luggage in our vehicle and met them back at Wendy's house. Luckily, Christopher was still there and able to then join us for lunch. Collin also joined us at the restaurant. The restaurant was super crowded but the food was pretty good.

Afterwards, we went back to Wendy's to hangout for a little bit more. Christopher gifted Christian a wireless microphone for his birthday. He had seen some of Christian's neat videos and thought that it might be useful. You can connect it to your camera or phone. Christian got to play with it a little as Christopher gave us a little example of his matcha tasting thing he does. Christian recorded him doing it.

We ended up polishing off the rest of the cake before heading back home.

I had a few token presents for Christian but we are mostly saving and waiting for what he really wants, which is a new mirrorless camera. The one he wants was just announced last week and will ship later this month!