August

After Caitlyn finished unpacking all her stuff, Marian came over to see her and for a celebratory dinner. Caitlyn requested seafood, so we had shrimp chow mein for lunch and scallops for dinner. We took some of her extra clothes and things that she doesn't fit any more to DI to make room for all her stuff.

After all the work was done, Caitlyn and I went out one day to the San Joaquin Marsh to take pictures. After looking at a map of the place, we were surprised about how big it actually was. Christian said that we normally go in from a side or back entrance and have never actually been to the entrance! Caitlyn and I decided to go check that out. Even though we were a lot closer to the ocean, it was still pretty hot. There were only a couple of other cars there at the front parking lot.

Overall, we were not that impressed with the ponds in the front. There were not a ton of birds out and most of the ponds were totally inaccessible because of all the overgrown reeds and other plants. There are supposed to be a few viewing sights around the ponds but even those were over grown for the most part.

There were some young Clark's Grebes with their parents out on one pond. That was pretty neat. We also saw a few other birds with their baby or adolescent offspring.

There were a few of the usual suspects: Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Double-crested Cormorant and such but birds we saw the most of were the Black Skimmers.

Caitlyn brought a tri-pod but didn't have the proper adapter to use it so she ended up leaving it in the car and having to handhold her camera the whole time. Plus, after walking a bit, her shoe was rubbing and hurting her feet, so we decided to leave. We didn't exactly want to just turn around and go home only after a couple of hours though. We contemplated what else we could do and decided to just head for the beach, that way she could take her shoes off.

We ended up going back to Sunset Beach because we knew we could probably find parking there. We stopped by Bolsa Chica to see if the Sea Turtles were still around. Apparently, it was high tide, so there was not a lot there. After taking a peak to see what we could find, we continued our way to the beach.

There were more people at the beach than the last time we came, but we were still able to find parking. The beach itself has mostly disappeared into the ocean. There has been a lot of big waves lately and there is only a small, somewhat steep strip left, which was weird....at least compared to what it used to be like.

We walked down the beach a little ways but decided to head back at some point because we didn't want to get back too late or run into the worst of the traffic.

We decided to get a little pop-up photo blind to see if we could get pictures of the Orioles and other birds without them flying away or not coming down when we are there. It worked like a charm! We finally got better pictures of the Hooded Oriole's that have been feeding in our hummingbird feeders all summer.

I must admit though, that these young Oriole's are not as guarded as their parents were. They are still very skiddish...just not quite as insanely so as their parents were.

All in all, we are very satisfied with our results from our photography hide. It was really fun watching their antics of feeding and fighting with each other. I only wish it wasn't quite so hot so that we could use it more and that we didn't get bit up by mosquitos while sitting on our lawn. We are thoroughly tired of both the heat and mosquitos in general, both of which has been very brutal this year. We make sure that the bird bath stays filled for the poor birds. They seem to be enjoying it.

We recently bit the bullet and got ourselves a new photo printer. I'm pretty sure our old one was still working but we hadn't used it in a while and when we tried to get new ink for it, we found out that they are no longer supporting the printer and you can't get one of the colors any more! We were not very happy about that. It was not a cheap printer and we were probably a little too timid using it because the ink was kind of expensive. We tried having our prints made at Shutterfly earlier this year, but the results were less than satisfactory. We complained about it and they reprinted it, but we basically got the same results. They didn't even check over their printer or have some technician check over our prints. We used to get decent prints from them and have been using them for many years now for most of our everyday prints or a few special projects. Now I don't even trust them for the simplest project. So we have been spending a lot of time catching up on the prints that we want and are very happy with the results from our new photo printer. 

Meanwhile, Emily has been finding out that her time and money at BYU-I has been mostly wasted. She looked into transferring to one of the CSU campuses to finish her degree and found that most of her units will not be transferrable. She can either go back there to finish her degree (which she definitely doesn't want to do), or mostly start over from scratch...probably not completely, but I'm sure it will feel like it. She is very frustrated and discouraged.

Caitlyn has been on the hunt for a job with no prospects thus far. She is frustrated as well. She has been spending some of her time, brushing up and reinforcing some of the skills and knowledge she was supposed to learn at school.

Christian has been back to school for a month now and has spent the last days sick with the flu already. He has already used half his sick days for the year and he is only a month into the new school year. He is back to work because he can't afford not to be there but he is not well yet. While he was out, he heard that they might have had another lockdown on campus but he couldn't find any information about it. Even when it escalates to being covered on the news, it seems like they don't like to reveal to parents or the teachers that work there what is really going on. They usually just brush it under the rug or hide it. You get all kinds of stories going around in the general public but no real answers. It is pretty frustrating.

Despite all odds, the chickens are still alive and kicking. They have survived the heat so far and several attempts from coyotes and probably hawks. Christian recently caught sight of a Cooper's Hawk perched on top of their house! The trail cam has shown nightly visits from foxes, racoons, and possums. We know that there is also a neighborhood cat that stalks our yard of birds.

The chickens are nearly full grown now and should start laying eggs any day now!

There was a deep partial lunar eclipse at the end of the month, so we had gone out to capture it.

It was kind of neat but it was somewhat obscured by passing clouds initially and then by the time it started to clear up, we were sick of being eaten alive by the mosquitos...so yeah, fun times.

Did I mention that we are sick to death of the heat and mosquitos? The heat has also been making our refrigerator struggle. It has been stressful wondering if it is going to keep working or not. We pulled it out and cleaned all the dust around it but it doesn't seem to be helping enough.

Birding in Idaho

We camped out in our usual campsite beyond the sand dunes. We were tired but it didn't rain on us, so we counted that as a plus. However, the place was covered in these disgusting bugs called "Mormon Crickets." Ugh, they were gross. They would come and snuggle up to our tents at night and wouldn't get out of your way when you walked around. After you inevitably stepped on some, their brethren would come and devour them. Absolutely disgusting. Of course, Christian took some picture and videos of them. I never wanted to set eyes on them again.

On our first day of birding in Idaho, we headed out to Camas National Wildlife Refuge near Hammer. At first, we were pretty excited to get here to find that there didn't seem to be hardly anybody else around. However, once we parked and started to walk around, the place honestly looked like it had been abandoned for at least a season. We had heard that they were struggling a bit due to not having as much rain lately, but I did not expect that the place was nearly boarded up with overgrown weeds everywhere around the visitor center. 

Regardless, we ventured forward to see what we could see...which didn't seem like a lot. It was hot, so most of the birds were not sitting out in the open...except for maybe the Common Nighthawks. They seemed to be the most abundant.

There were also a lot of doves...but they became an annoyance pretty quick because they are so skiddish. Every time you approached where they were or looked their way, they took off in a racket as if we were coyote's hot on their tail. So of course, they flushed most of the other birds nearby as well to take off before we could get close enough to take a picture or even identify them.

We did manage to see some Brewer's Sparrows. Christian found a next of young Red-tailed Hawks and some Gray Partridge. Besides the Common Nighthawks, I managed to get some of the usual suspects...Western Kingbirds, American Kestrels and Western Meadowlarks. I also got an American Robin and a Loggerhead Shrike. We decided to move a little further to find water and hopefully a few more birds.

We did find some White-faced Ibis and Great Egrets and stuff like that, but none of the birds we were hoping to find like the Sandhill Crane. We did find other animals along the shrinking creek, including a Moose! That was strange. We also saw a couple of deer and a number of Pronghorns.

We were quickly running out of time, however, and decided that we had better head back to Rexburg to have time to clean up before Caitlyn's Graduation ceremony.

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The next night, we got rained on a bit overnight but our tents were mostly dry by the time we got up. We went to bed a little too late and got up a little too early. We wanted to pack up before it rained again, while everything was mostly dry. We saw rain clouds in the distance but as we put our things away, we saw that the storm was not coming our way but headed to Rexburg.

We got some neat sunrise shots though. We decided to go slightly south of where we were yesterday. It did not seem worthwhile to explore Camas any more. We headed to the Market Lake Wildlife Management Area. On the way, we saw some Brewer's Blackbirds and Eastern Kingbirds along with a number of Swainson's Hawks along the road. It was hard to get going because we kept spotting birds along the road and there wasn't always a great place to pull over to take pictures.

Overall, I liked this area a little better than Camas, but the birds were even more wary of people. With some caution and persistence, we did get a Yellow-headed Blackbird and a couple of Trumpeter Swans. The Yellow-headed Blackbird was one of my goals for this area. I also saw a variety of baby ducks and even a couple of baby Coots.

We had hoped for slightly cooler weather for our birding up here in Idaho, but didn't get much of a break from the heat. We were tired and hot a lot of the time with heat haze interfering with our cameras' ability to focus. It was a pretty area though.

The only problem was that it seemed a lot of the trails were temporarily closed off. If it wasn't so far (and in Idaho), we would probably go back. But as it was, I don't know if we would make the effort to come back to Idaho. The girls are sick of Idaho in general and we all have some trauma from the area and the people, in general, in one way or another and have no plans to return any time soon.

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On the last morning, we packed up camp and went to pick up the girls to make our way home. We planned to take two days to return home, but we did not want to take the usual route home. We do not want to get stuck on the 15 outside of Nevada again. It is is always such a nightmare there. The fact that you can get through Las Vegas during their peak traffic hours better than you can get through that section of the 15 in California is very telling. They needed to expand the road at least 10 years ago, but California won't do it. They are too busy spending our tax dollars lining the pockets of all the politicians and their friends and paying for their pet projects.

As usual, we were distracted on our drive away from our campsite, seeing what kind of birds were along the road. There were some American Kestrels feasting on some of the Mormon Crickets. We saw more Swainson's Hawks and we even saw a juvenile Bald Eagle in a nest. Unfortunately, it was in someone's yard, so we didn't do more than take a quick snapshot before moving on.

On our way out, we had decided that we wanted to stop by the Hummingbird Feeding Area near Kimberly, ID. We were really excited to see if we can find some new hummingbirds. It's not exactly on the way but we did not think it would be too far of a detour for the route we were going. It actually did take us a very long time to get there. It was definitely farther off our path than I had thought. And once we finally got there, we realized what a horrible decision it was to go here.

The place is not very big and it was packed with people. Most of the people had no real interest in the hummingbirds at all. They were just families using the area as a pull out with easy access to the river. They were just using it as a unique and convenient picnic area. They were really loud and obnoxious. They took up the whole area and didn't even try to make room for people actually coming to see the hummingbirds. Since we drove hours out of the way in our already very long journey, we tried to see if we could take some pictures anyway to find out what was there. Christian tried, but didn't last long. It was more than he could stand and left to wait for us in the car. Emily didn't bring her camera, so she just wandered about a bit. Caitlyn and I attempted to take pictures of the birds. This was Caitlyn's first real chance to try out her new lens. We tried to just focus on the birds, but after a few minutes more, we were also too annoyed to stay there. Most of the hummingbirds appeared, at first, to be mostly Black-chinned and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds. But after coming home and inspecting some of our pictures, we did find some Caliope Hummingbirds in the mix. Unfortunately, they were only female ones in my pictures, so I did not see any of their more striking male counterparts.

The whole experience was pretty disappointing. We decided to cut our losses and hit the road back home. We still had a very long way to go. 

We ended up crossing over into California rather late that evening. We were pretty tired. We went a bit farther than we intended because we didn't know where we could camp, so we just went to the closest area that we were familiar with...and that was in the Mono Lake area. We also knew that it would be one of the coolest places we could camp. We were too tired to really consider what that would be like though, so we were not exactly prepared and we were a little too chilled! Emily happened to have a sweatshirt, so she did not have too much of a problem. I was a little cold but it wasn't too bad for me. Caitlyn had it the worst and did not get a lot of sleep. I was silly because we had tons of blanket and bigger sleeping bags in the car, but once we went to bed, no one wanted to get up to try to get more blankets and disturb the others.

In the morning, we had a quick breakfast, took down camp, and decided to see what kind of birds we could find around the Lake.

Again, it was very hot out, so we didn't see a lot. We saw a couple of Mountain Bluebirds, a few Sagebrush Sparrows and a lot of California Seagulls. Actually, that's not exactly true, Christian captured a shot of a Violet Green Swallow! The heat haze was through the roof though, so I didn't end up with a whole lot of shots worth keeping.

We didn't stay too long and continued our long drive home after lunch. We got home for a late dinner that evening. We didn't unload anything but the essentials. After dinner and showers, we turned in to get some real sleep at long last!

Caitlyn's Graduation

Caitlyn decided to walk for her Graduation Convocation. She opted to skip the regular Commencement portion of the graduation ceremonies, as it is long, boring and impersonal. 

Emily took a week off work to join us for the trip to Idaho. She went to work on Monday and came home to get ready for our trip. The night before, Christian and I were looking at the weather forecasts as we would be taking two days to drive up and would camp somewhere in between. We found out there there were thunderstorms on the horizon and that they were expecting flash floods exactly where we planned on camping. Farther up, we would have to worry about being too close to the fires that are raging throughout Utah this year. We decided to see if we could stay in Mesquite with Aron. It is not as far as we wanted to go that day but it was way better than trying to do the trip in one day like we've done many times in the past. It is just too tiring and painful.

I sent a message off to Aron in the morning but did not hear back from her. By evening, as we were getting the final things for our trip packed up, I was getting really worried about our plans. I was also not feeling very well. It started in the morning and seemed to just build as the day progressed. I finally texted Aron again after dinner and finally got a hold of her. Apparently, she never got my message that morning!

Anyway, they seemed a little busy and it is always kind of a pain in the butt to stay with them because we can have dinner with them but at some point, Dillan, Craig's autistic son, usually wants us to leave. So the only way to stay with them is to hide downstairs so he doesn't know that we are still there. There is no bathroom downstairs and no private entrance/exit. She also checked to see if we could stay with Mason in St. George, but he had a whole thing going on at work that he has to deal with. He offered for us to sleep there still, but he would be too busy to do anything with us. We didn't want to be a nuisance when he had his own problems to deal with at the time. In the end, she offered to get us an Airbnb farther along on our journey. I didn't think Christian would want to do that but I was getting sicker by the minute, so he thought that it might actually be a good idea, otherwise, we would not be able to even make it up.

As I was working out the details with her, I was getting super nauseous. Emily washed up our dinner dishes and went out to set up all my hummingbird feeders with water. She came in to check on me and I had to ask her to run out to get me some ginger ale. I didn't know what else to do or what was wrong with me. Christian was packing up the car when he found out that there was something wrong with the truck. He could not get the lights to turn off on the truck. So, over a year ago, the right side passenger door threw some kind of code that the door wasn't closed properly and nothing we did would get it to turn off.  We left it like that as we would have to take the whole door apart to see what the problem was and it wasn't causing any problems. Since we got Terry's Trooper, Christian has been using that as his daily driver instead of the truck and over them summer, when we needed to move the truck for "street sweeping" day but the truck would not start. We had to jump the truck battery in order to move it. The battery is fairly new, so we knew that there was a problem. Apparently, the door "not closing properly" was causing some parasitic draw on the battery when left sitting for long amounts of time. Usually, when he drove it nearly every day, it was enough to recharge the battery. But now, all of a sudden, it was causing other electronic problem in the truck and he had to deal with that, otherwise we could get stranded in the middle of nowhere because the lights would no longer shut off.

I took some sips of ginger ale and hoped that it would settle my stomach, but it did not. I managed to hold it together until I finished corresponding with Aron. I just managed to make it to the bathroom at that point and threw up...three times. My stomach felt a little better but my head felt like it was going to explode. I cleaned up and crawled into bed to try to get some sleep. Christian ended up taking the bulbs in the truck out so that it could not stay on the whole time. He will have to take the door apart at some point to see if he can find the faulty wire or sensor that tells the stupid computer that the door is actually closed. To say that the evening was a total nightmare is putting it mildly.

Early the next morning, we got up to leave. I felt mostly human again but too wary to eat anything. I put some ginger ale into my thermos cup and sipped on it most of the way to Nevada to keep my stomach settled. We met up with Aron and Craig for lunch. They wanted to go eat Mexican food. I just ordered a little bowl of soup. The salty broth sat fairly well in my stomach and felt a little better. We visited with Aron for a little while before they had to take off. We needed to be on our way too.

We got to the Airbnb that evening. It is a cute little over the garage unit. It had two bedrooms, a small living area and kitchen with dining area. The guy had some bird business in his garage and the unit was decorated with bird themed designs, which seemed appropriate for us. We had a hasty late dinner and called it a night. We were pretty exhausted. We drove through a couple of thunderstorms and could still see some storms in the distance. We got some decent rest and had thought about taking a walk to check out the area, but by the time we finished breakfast and had all taken showers, it was getting late and decided to just head out. It was already getting warm out and we still had a long drive ahead of us.

We made it into Idaho Falls by around lunchtime and decided to stop for burritos at a place we'd gone to with the girls before. One of the girl's previous roommates, who had graduated when Emily left earlier this year, was in Utah visiting her boyfriend and was somewhere behind us on the road. She was hoping to overtake us along the way and steal Emily into her vehicle but she never quite caught up. We ordered an extra burrito for her and she met us up there for lunch.

We got to the apartment in the afternoon. The road in front of their apartment is a mess. They pulled the whole thing up before the end of the semester and it is just dirt at that time. It looks like a dystopian nightmare when the wind kicks up and blows the dirt everywhere because they didn't bother to put water down.

Because it was so early, we got to meet the rest of their friends/roommates and then decided to go on campus that afternoon to take our pictures early. There will be graduates going on practically all day around the campus for the various departments, so we decided to get a jump on it.

Marian wanted to make a graduation lei for her but then decided that she didn't have time and got Emily to do it for her...then she picked the most difficult design for her to do! Emily spent about 20 hours working on that thing! She actually had to redo her first 4 hours or so because it fell apart but it turned out really nice. I made a crochet yarn lei for her and her Aunt Wendy sent a kukui nut lei through Emily for Caitlyn that she picked up in Hawaii.

Caitlyn had picked up several dresses that she was considering for the graduation. She sent one to us at home and she received the other two. She was going to wear this lavender dress originally but I noted that it would kind of clash with her blue stole so she opted for the other dress she mostly picked up for fun. It turned out to be gorgeous and went really well. She got compliments on her outfit everywhere we went as we ran around campus taking pictures. The sun was a bit harsh at that hour and was not ideal for picture taking. Plus, we were super hot, so that didn't help.

We were also super annoyed because there were a lot of families visiting all around campus and most of the kids were just super annoying and badly behaved. They were just screaming their heads off non-stop. That is not acceptable behavior anywhere at any time, much less in a public area with a bunch of other people around. People seem to just be raising psychopaths these days. That wasn't the kids fighting or getting hurt or even whining and complaining. That was the kids happy and playing which sounds a lot like they are getting slaughtered. The kids next door to us sound the same way.

After we took the family pictures, their friends came on campus so that we could take a few more of them.

Caitlyn and Natalyn prepared dinner for everyone ahead of time. They made a big pot of spaghetti sauce and then had to just make the noodles for dinner. Luckily Sarah was not moving yet, so they were able to use her pots and pans. Caitlyn and Natalyn had already packed their's away. Natalyn is leaving to go on her mission this fall in Texas. Elise had graduated and left. Emily got her AA and cut her losses there and left. Natalyn doesn't plan on returning to Idaho when she finishes her mission and Sarah only plans to be there one more year before transferring back home to Indiana to finish school there and maybe get married. None of them particularly enjoyed their time at BYU-I.

We left way too late and we were very tired. The next day, the girls were going to finish packing and cleaning. Christian and I decided to stay out of their way so that they had time to take care of what they needed and had time to spend together as they were all heading in different directions in a couple of days.

We came back in the afternoon before the ceremony. Everyone cleaned up and got dressed to head over to the campus so that we could get seats.

I stole Christian's lens to take pictures. Christian waited in Caitlyn's building for us because he couldn't take anymore of the chaos and screaming of people. Unfortunately, there was not a ton of light and my shutter-speed was set too low. I took some test shots beforehand, but the people were just sitting or standing there. When Caitlyn finally got called up, they practiced her name to make sure that they said it right and she filled out a form with how to pronounce it phonetically and the guy mostly got it fine when he practiced it with her but when it was time to say it out loud, he totally screwed it up. Caitlyn was annoyed and looked back at him with this funny look on her face. Luckily, she was so overjoyed at graduated and leaving there that she mostly shirked it off but she was walking kind of fast through the stage and most of my pictures were blurry!

So half of her was covered by the weird barrier on the stage. She didn't look out very much and had in fact looked back when they mispronounced her name and made a funny face, then she rushed off in a blur and tore off her cap as soon as she started leaving the stage. I am so glad we took pictures before all this.

She also graduated Summa Cum Laude. They did not offer her a cord for it or acknowledge the fact seemingly in any other way during the ceremony. We figured that BYU was not an academic enough school and they don't even differentiate (but it was on her actual diploma that we received in the mail a couple of weeks later). We had ordered pizza from this fancy pizza place in town. They make wood fired pizzas with long fermented dough and had a bunch of unique toppings we wanted to try. I basically ordered it a couple of weeks in advance so that we weren't scrambling after the ceremony. I checked the status of it before leaving campus, only to find out that although I had ordered it to be ready at 7:pm that evening, they decided to adjust the time to 8:pm! They said that they may have adjusted for our time zone or some bullshit like that, but we are obviously picking it up in Rexburg, so that made absolutely no sense. In fact, they if that was the case, they really should have had it ready at 6, as our area code would indicate that we were in California! That was not going to work for us as it was already late and everyone was hungry, so I had to call them and get that fixed. They put a rush on it for us and the girls went to pick it up for us when we got back.

The pizza was admittedly, really good. We got some ideas for our own pizzas next time we make it. Aron had sent us with a bunch of sodas from their Fourth of July party. We had planned to get a few more sides and stuff but never made it to the store. It was probably for the best as the pizzas were bigger than I had anticipated and there was plenty of food for the seven of us.

We were there again too late that evening. The girls wanted to take pictures at the BYU-I "monument." We had to wait until most of the people were gone as they wanted to climb for their picture.

Christian and I were planning on going birding again the next day. Caitlyn had her clean check for the apartment in the morning, then the girls were going to meet Sanya and her husband for breakfast in town . Elise had to head home early for a wedding. Sarah was tired and took a nap while Emily, Caitlyn and Elise decided to go ice skating. They would spend one more night there together and we would all be taking off in the morning to head our separate ways.

Bolsa Chica

A couple of weeks into the month, we figured that we have barely left the house and we made the effort to go out and do something. With the weather being so bad lately and not finding much to photograph lately at San Jacinto Wildlife area, we decided to see what it was like in Bolsa Chica. At least it should be a little cooler being next to the ocean. Unfortunately, we didn't check and it was high tide so there was not a ton of birds in their usual places.

We did still manage to get a small handful of new birds. We got a Least Tern and a Black Tern.

I also got a shot of an Osprey with it's catch which was amazing! I had been tracking him for some time but there was false alarm at one point when it dove in the ocean but came back up with nothing unless it was small and it just ate it. It was quite a distance away and the bridge was in the way where it had dove down. Christian had left his camera capturing a time lapse of the clouds or something and had gone back to the car for something. At some point, I was messing with my camera, trying to see if I captured anything when I hear Christian yelling at me from the bridge. The Osprey was flying in m direction with a big fish in it's claws. A seagull made a slight attempt at stealing the catch from him. I frantically pointed my camera up to try to capture him. My lens is not the fastest and I have been having a lot of trouble getting it to focus fast enough to capture flying birds. It's been hit or miss, mostly miss...especially on the smaller faster birds. I have had limited success with the bigger ones that don't dart around quite so fast. Plus it is hard to even find the bird with my long lens before it disappears behind a tree or building...that's what is usually nice about Bolsa Chica, you have fairly wide open spaces to capture things.

I was pretty excited about this shot. We caught the Osprey with it's catch before but it was farther and I was down at a lower spot when it flew over me and a raised berm to plunge down on the other side to grab a fish and take off in the distance. I got a few shots off but they were not fabulous. You can tell what it was but that's about it. I still could have gotten a better shot if I was faster but I'm pretty happy with this one.

We also got a Yellow-crowned Night Heron which was pretty neat but it is a youngster and didn't have the adult plumage yet. I even got a video clip of him eating a sand crab! It didn't do much for much of the rest of the time. Just taking naps or grooming itself. We might have gotten a Baird's Sandpiper but it was amongst some other birds and a very great distance and with the heat haze, it was difficult to tell for sure. A lot of the shore birds look alike and are difficult to identify. It is nice that we have pictures so that we can investigate and identify them at our leisure at home...when we have a good enough shot of it at least.

We called it a day when there was no longer enough light out to get pictures and headed home. 

4th of July

Since Emily is home, we decided to actually do something for 4th of July this year. It has been many years since we have bothered. Also Sanya was apparently in town with her new and growing family, so we made an effort to go to her parents' annual Fourth of July party. Sanya and Emily mostly grew up together and are practically the same age. Sanya got married a few years ago and already has two kids!!! So, yeah, we took Emily to visit Sanya, but we went to visit with the babies!

Mark, Sanya's husband is in the military, so they are currently living in Montana. We found out that they will be up in Rexburg at the same time we will be up there for Caitlyn's graduation, so the girls made plans to get together for breakfast or something.

We had a nice visit with the Deans. We got to hold the baby for a little while. We had some burgers. We saw some fireworks. Surprisingly, there was no fire this year. 

June

After our brief visit to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, and after we recovered from the heat of that day, we decided to return there during the week to join the bird walk to see if we what we could learn and find.

We did learn that out of the four owlets we observed the last time we were there, only two had survived, although, we did not hear what happened to them. We did not find any of them on our walk.

We did not see a ton of birds on our walk. I think that most of the birds are staying deep in the tree where it is more shaded as it is quite hot out nowadays. We heard a few birds, including the elusive Blue Grosbeak, but did not see it. I did finally get a glimpse of Lucy's Warbler. We often hear it but can never spot it in the trees.

There were still a decent amount of birds at the feeders looking for food and water. The Blue Grosbeak, however, still did not show up.

We did discover a family of Cooper's Hawks prowling around though. They were not in the tree that some of the birders usually see them in, but they did come in to terrorize some of the smaller birds eating at the feeders several times while we were there. I'm not sure if they captured any of them, as all the birds pretty much scatter when they arrive, but they hung about for quite some time.

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We went by the San Jacinto Wildlife Area once again to see who might be out and about. Most of the marshes lay dry and empty apparently this time of year. I think they only have a few of marshes that still have water. The road to the lake has been closed off for some reason so we don't really have ready access to it. It is a long walk in this heat to get to it otherwise.

We found a tree with a great many little birds in it, but we had to really work for them. They were difficult to find and harder to capture. We knew heard the Common Yellow-throats in there and the Blue Grosbeak once again. I was able to get the Common Yellow-throat and Christian managed to get a few shots of the Blue Grosbeak at last. I still have not been able to get a glimpse of the elusive bird.

There seemed to be a great many birds that showed a flash of yellow as it darted in and out of the trees. We saw some Lesser Goldfinches, Kingbirds, a Northern Yellow Warbler and the common Yellowthroat. We would have stayed out there longer but the heat was really unrelenting and the heat haze was ruining many of our shots, so we called it a day.

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For Father's Day, we went for a drive out to the Rodman Mountains. Emily drove as our Jeep is still out of commission. Actually, first we had all washed and waxed her car. then Christian helped her change the oil on it as it was due for a change. We had not looked into it when she got home since we were all so busy and she's been driving back and forth every weekend since. So it was a bit of a shame to take it out and get it dirty immediately, but it was nice to be able to go out and enjoy the newly cleaned and tuned vehicle. After we washed and waxed my Trooper, it sat in the driveway for several days. By the time I had a chance to take it out, it was already covered in a layer of dust!

We originally headed out to the area to go birding at the Mojave Narrows Regional Park. It's not really the type of place we normally go as they charge just to park there but we heard good things about the birding there and decided to check it out. We regretted it immediately. Not only do they charge for parking, but they charge more on the weekends to take advantage of people who finally have time to go out. And there was a long queue to even get to the kiosk. Before very long, we decided that we definitely didn't want to wait in line to pay to get in. That was way too crowded and unpleasant for us, so we turned about and left. Several other cars had the same thought. It was rather ridiculous.

So, that's when we headed out to the Rodman Mountains. We'd been there before but we thought we would take Emily out there and we could get a bit of space and some peace and quiet.

I was a bit disappointed to not be able to check out a new birding area but we did see a few birds including an Ash-Throated Flycatcher and a Lesser Nighthawk. That last one was quite a nice find as it was just resting on the ground. If you just glance over, you would think that it was just another rock until you saw it looking back at you! That was actually pretty exciting. We also saw more of the Black-throated Sparrows.

We wanted to do more birding, but it was getting late and we wanted to hit the Ludlow Cafe to grab some dinner. We knew that they did not have late hours. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was still closed. I think that if they don't have vey much business, they just end up closing early, so it is very difficult to plan like that. I don't know if they will be able to stay open much longer.

Disappointed, we headed home. There was nothing else out there that enticed us. We ended up grabbing some carne asada burritos back in Riverside, which thankfully, were still pretty good, although, much more expensive than they used to be...like everything else.

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At the end of the month, we made it back to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area once more. It was however, desperately hot. There are not so many different kinds of birds there at this time of the year. A lot of Red-winged Black Birds and White-faced Ibis with some Egrets here and there. 

There were some smaller birds but they were extremely hard to find. Once again, the Blue Grosbeak was out there somewhere but I was not able to capture it. It was so very frustrating. We love coming here but we may have to take a break until the fall if the birds are moving on to places with more water. Plus, it is so miserably hot here that we don't quite have as much patience to wait the birds out. I guess we will see.

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At home, Emily's chickens are growing quickly. They almost look like adult chickens already. I have discovered that while we have a lot of birds coming to our bird feeder, it is not the reason the bird seeds seem to disappear so quickly these days. We've had another animal that has been raiding the bird feeder.

While I didn't mind it quite so much if a squirrel picks up some of the bird food that drops from their feeder, I do mind it climbing down to the feeder itself and inhaling all the birds seeds. Actually, I had a ground feeder that I suspected might attract the squirrel and only put a little food in there each day when I knew the birds were most active, otherwise I left it empty. But I woke up one morning to look out and see the squirrel deftly raiding the bottle feeder and went out to chase it away. It planned to just wait up higher in the Madrone until I walked away to return to his meal. I took a few swipe with a stick in his direction to try to get him to leave and even shook the tree until it jumped out into the Camphor tree instead. It was chittering loudly at me and flicking his tail in an agitated way. It was a little scary and creepy actually. He wanted to just climb down to our driveway but I wouldn't leave, so it went the other direction towards our neighbor's yard and jumped down one of the overhanging branches from there and ran across the street from there. I stayed a little longer to see if it would return once more. I think that it stayed over there a while watching before it finally went away. I don't know if he return occasionally, but the seeds have not gone down nearly as quickly as it had been. I've been putting some peppermint oil at the top where he gains access to the feeder to hopefully discourage it from returning.

Bird seed is not as cheap as it used to be and I am putting it out there to attract birds to my yard, not squirrels!

The birds, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying the new water source. 

They are certainly going to need it in this heat. Also, we were excited to confirm that we have five different kinds of hummingbirds coming in to our feeders! Here is a Black-chinned Hummingbird trying to claim one of the feeders as his own. There was a Costa that was most dominant here before. I don't know if he lost the power struggle or not but there are a lot of different hummingbirds using this feeder.

The feeder nearest the kitchen window has been long dominated by an Anna's Hummingbird. He expends a lot more energy protecting what he thinks is his feeder. Other hummers fly in and gets drinks occasionally when he is preoccupied or away but not as many. He is a vicious little thing but stands no chance when the Oriole's swoop in. That feeder has the widest holes for the Oriole's so they prefer that one, much to the annoyance of the dominant Anna's. 

We have continued to work on and improve the yard when we can stand the heat. Christian has also been trying to clean up the mess in the garage. He has also been taking and gathering pictures of Emily and her various projects for Caitlyn who is working on a website for her senior project which she has to build and present next month.