May

We spent most of our extra time going through our old building supplies and putting a chicken coop for the chickens who are growing a lot. The chickens were still mostly sleeping in a box in the garage but they are quickly outgrowing that arrangement. During the day, we have another bigger box they go in that is set up as their "play pen."

In order to get the chickens to be comfortable in their new home, we had to put the box they had been sleeping in into the coop so that they had familiar surroundings. We will remove it as they get more comfortable and as the weather warms up. It will be a work in progress for some time to come.

It is still Spring, although some days feel like Summer. But the birds have been migrating so we have lost some of the birds that have been hanging about for a while. A lot of the sparrows and the juncos seemed to have moved on except a house sparrow family that set up house in an old woodpecker cavity in the neighbors tree. I miss the Lark Sparrows most of all. We did get some new birds that came through for a little while though. We had some Black-headed Grosbeaks that stopped by to feed at our feeders for a short time. That was pretty exciting.

The ever skittish Hooded Orioles have stuck around so far, much to the annoyance of our hummingbirds. But I was excited to find a Western Warbling Vireo come by. 

Even with all the sparrows gone, there is no shortage of birds around. Often, if I look out my window, I can spot at least a dozen house finches milling around the seed feeder and I keep increasing the amount of nectar I put out for the hummingbirds but they seem to drain it faster and faster. I used to only have one feeder outside my kitchen window and it would take 3 or 4 days for them to empty it. I did not fill it completely so that it would not sit there too long and ferment or anything. When they started to drain faster, I filled the bottle more...which turned into two partially filled bottles...which turned into two completely full bottles. Now they drain both bottles in a day or two at the most...with the help of the Orioles, of course.

They are still territorial, but the Anna's Hummingbird that guards the front, can't do anything when the Oriole's come in. They still chase each other away at the second feeder but more of them manage to get along enough to get drinks there, especially at the end of the day. Unfortunately, a couple of bees want in on the free nectar as well sometimes. 

While we were out working on the chicken coop one weekend, there was a ruckus because a crow had invaded the area of a couple of Kestrels. I'm not sure if it raided their nest to steal their eggs or kill their young, or just because it was in their tree. It was too far to see any details. But the Kestrels were squawking and dive bombing the crow for quite some time before it finally left.

We continue every week to work on clearing out our yard...hopefully enough that the fire department doesn't complain about our property. I don't know when they will be going around or if they have already done so. With summer around the corner and fire season already in full swing, I would think that they have better things to do, but who knows.

I am also upgrading our little bird bath and trying out a solar fountain. If it turns out well, I will definitely want to work on this more in the future.

Mother's Day

A week after my mother's brief, but somewhat traumatic stay at the hospital, was Mother's Day weekend. Emily still came home at the beginning of the weekend. The last day to get our online home inspection done was that Saturday. You have to do it using some third party app on your phone, so we told Emily to do it for us. She had trouble getting the app to work on Christian's older phone so we had to do it again on mine. It still didn't work, but this time it was saying that our link was expired, which isn't true. The paperwork clearly said that we had until that day to do it. She had to call them to get them to fix it manually for us, giving them information on our home that we were told that we shouldn't give them because now this third party company has our address and video footage of the inside and outside of our home! Anyway, the whole thing was a nightmare and a half. 

While Emily was still mucking around with the phone trying to get it to work, Christian was exhausted and went in to get a nap. When we were finally done, we decided to go out. One of the questions on the inspection was to ask if we had live stock. We didn't, but the chickens that Emily wanted came back to mind. We decided to go to the feed store to look at the chicks again. We found a nice little feed store that had all kinds of chicks. I decided to just get the chicks for Emily for all her help. They would let us get only two chicks but they recommended an extra one in case something happened to one of them. They are very social birds and one typically does not survive very well without a friend, so in the end, we ended up with three chicks!

They are so cute and surprisingly cuddly. We didn't have a coop for them yet, so they are basically in a box at this point. 

The next day was Mother's Day and my sister planned a "high tea" for her. Emily made little cucumber sandwiches. I made scones, clotted cream and shortbread cookies.

My sister made salmon finger sandwiches and had fresh fruit. Christopher made us a matcha latte. Jared had made some dumplings with my mom and they had some leftover stuffing, so after lunch, she set us back up to work on making the rest.

We actually brought the chicks with us, since they are small and portable right now. Everyone got to play with them.

My mom is mostly feeling better but she still seems to have a low grade constant headache. They had adjusted her medication and it helps but doesn't really solve the problem, so we will see. She doesn't want to bother with any extreme measures that might fix the problem because of her age. There is a lot of risk in all of the possibilities anyway so everyone is keeping an eye on her for now. She still doesn't have a lot of energy but I think it is better than before and she has more of an appetite and is eating normally again...well, at least what is normal for her.

We took the opportunity to do some group pictures with my mom while so many of us are in town. We are only missing Caitlyn and Collin. Caitlyn, of course is still up at school finishing her last semester and Collin skipped out on us to study for his finals or something...but it didn't stop him from getting together with his cousins for Korean BBQ on Friday night! Caitlyn didn't want to be left out so she drew herself into the group photo. Wendy wanted us to photoshop them in but I liked Caitlyn's version so much,  I added Collin in as well!

April - Part 2

We continued the never ending task of cleaning up the yard, but we could only get rid of whatever fits in the trash bins every week. We turned our attention to the patio covering which really needed some work. We replaced some of pieces, reinforced others and painted it. It really needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch but we really don't have the time for that.

When Emily and I went during the week to pick up the pvc roofing material up, she saw baby chickens at the store. Emily and Caitlyn actually had been talking about attempting to change the tree house into a big chicken coop some years ago, but we never did it. The kids had gone off to college and were almost never here anyway. There was some regret about that when we had that egg shortage last year.

We had to move all the piles of wood and metal accumulated from past projects or for projects not yet tackled. It was a right mess.

As Emily would be starting her internship again near the end of the month, we made an effort to get out for short periods of time. We went to check out the San Jacinto Wildlife Area. There was actually a fire that went to the edge of the area at the beginning of the month while I was at jury duty. Christian actually saw the smoke from work and came home a little early because he knew I was not home and it looked like it was coming from our area.

Because we didn't go very early, since we spend our mornings working, the heat haze was a real problem. There seemed also to be less birds out and about. Emily joked that all we saw were Red-winged black birds and Coots.

Which wasn't exactly true, but it sure did feel like it. We did manage to find 2 or 3 lifers though and a much better look at the Tri-colored blackbird. We also got to see some super cute ducklings.

We also found that a lot of the trails seemed to be closed off so we couldn't find our way out to Mystic Lake. We finally called it a day but saw a coyote on our way out. We were tracking it when it stopped and pounced on something. Looks like it got some rodent or gopher or something out in the field. That was pretty neat!

While out on one of our errands, we stopped to check out the Mary Vagle Nature Center. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but it was a nice little neighborhood "park" with a lot of California Native plants. There is a little pond there with ducks. Most of the ducks were some variety of domestic ducks from some farm or something. There is a little hike that will take you out a bit farther but we didn't get to check it out as it was too hot and we still had other things to do.

We actually went back out to the store one weekend so that Emily could get her chickens, but the store required you to buy four. She only wanted one or two. So we didn't get any.

Emily finally had to start her internship and left to stay with her grandmother again. Before the end of the first week though, Emily said that she was worried about grandma because her blood pressure has been high, she's been sleeping a lot and not eating with Emily for the last couple of nights. I guess last night she did not eat at all. She was complaining that her head hurt a lot. Later, she wrote that she was taking my mom to Urgent Care. They recommended she go to the hospital. The paper she got said to "evaluate for persistent HA." We found out later that HA is for headache.

She said that she has had bad headaches for weeks and had an appointment on Monday with her doctor. At the hospital they gave her a chest X-Ray and a CT scan. They gave her some medicine and drew blood. They said she could go home if she started to feel better. She didn't. Her blood pressure did go down some from when they went in. They did another CT scan and found a small aneurysm in her head. They don't have neurologists there so they were going to move her to another hospital. That was finally from 1:am. Emily finally headed home then. The hospital is supposed to my sister with any updates and where they were moving her to.

In the morning, we hadn't heard anything so I called and got a bit of a run-around from the hospital. I finally found out that they moved her to a hospital out towards LA. It was actually the hospital where my grandmother had gone to before she passed away many years ago. Because there was still morning traffic and they were probably still getting my mom settled at the new hospital, I hurried up to apply a coat of paint on the porch where we made some repairs. I then headed out to see my mom and picked up my brother along the way.

The neurologist told us that she had an aneurism actually at the base of her skull...but that it had been there for quite some time. A scan from a few years ago at the same hospital she transferred from earlier had shown the aneurism but they never told her about it! My sister and my mom said that she went to the hospital because she didn't feel good. It was a week or so before they were planning to go to Cancun for vacation. She was at the hospital for a couple of days and then they released her saying that she was ok. 

Years later, because of some extra high blood pressure, it had been causing her a lot of bad headaches...combined with some other medicine her family doctor has had her on for her neuropathy, she had not been sleeping well. Apparently that medicine has a lot of caffeine in it and is addictive to boot. So, she was hesitant to take as much as they prescribed her to take. She only took it in extreme cases. The neurologist said that it has a "kick back" of causing more pain when your system withdrawals from it. It becomes a vicious cycle of addiction. He recommended that we slowly get her off of it. As she had not taken it for a couple of days already, we felt it was best that she just stop taking it. The neurologist was actually very patient and caring to explain the whole situation to us. Most of the staff there was actually very good. All interactions with the previous hospital was a nightmare though. 

Our nephew Christopher arrived later that morning and was there with us for the rest of the day. He ran out and picked up some lunch for us while we waited for my mom's MRI that was scheduled. Unfortunately, we found out that the machines were down and they postponed it for another couple of hours. When she finally got her MRI, she was pretty exhausted. She got some new medication and had dinner already, so we got her ready for bed and left her to rest. Christopher was off to meet some friends for dinner. I took my brother back home. Emily came to meet us and have a late dinner with us. Debbie had made us all dinner so we got to recount the situation with everybody there and visit for a while. It was late by the time we were done, so Emily and I stayed at my mom's place. Christopher was supposed to go back there that night as well. He planned to go back to the hospital the next day to look after my mom. I packed a few things for my mom for him to bring with him.

In the morning, I had a quick breakfast with Emily and headed home. Christian was already hard at work outside. Emily followed a short time after and stopped by the store to bring us a few more supplies. We probably would have stayed if we didn't have only a week left to work before the inspection was due. The whole situation was pretty messed up and stressful. 

After monitoring my mother overnight and some additional tests and therapy, they said that she could go home, so Christopher brought her home that evening and she was finally able to get some peace and sleep in her own bed. His brother, Jared had also come down to see my mom, so he stayed to help my mom and Christopher was able to go back to work. She still has headaches but it is not as debilitating as before. She still doesn't have a ton of energy, but I think it is a little better than before. She sometimes doesn't really tell us everything going on with her until it gets super bad. But the long and the short of it all is that the neurologist said that in the scans from a couple of years ago showed that the bulge on the aneurism was already calcified. He did not think that it was new even then...so we don't know how long she has had it. She was in a really bad accident back in the 90s I think that might have been the cause of it all but she really didn't have insurance and everything to get any follow up appointments to see how she was doing after her initial visit in the Emergency Room. She is too old now for any medical interventions, and since they were able to ascertain that the aneurism did not rupture, they are just going to leave it alone and hope that some changes to her medication for her blood pressure and pain would mitigate the problems she was having.

April - Part 1

We've been so busy lately that I am woefully behind on my posts. Let's see how much I remember from the flurry of activities from the month. I spent a couple of more days wasting away in court for jury duty. It took three days for them to finally choose a pool of jurors that they were happy with. I barely got out of it. Thank goodness I didn't get picked as I didn't want to do a couple more weeks of that crap.

Sometimes in the evenings, if we have enough energy, we would take walks out into the meadow to see what is around. There are always little birds hiding around the Elderberry bush. There are usually donkeys around somewhere and there are often kestrels or hawks flying around. At the very least, you can usually count on the crows or ravens to practice on.

I know we spent most of the month cleaning up our porch and pruning our tree. It will take the rest of the month to even get rid of the branches we've been cutting down. We have been fixing our garden up in front as well. We put up a little fence to keep the donkeys out of our yard.

Most of the work in the front was to protect our garden and make it nice for our birdies. Most of the work in the back was because the insurance company demanded that we do some stupid AI home inspection using some third party app.

Luckily, Emily came home this month. She lended a much needed hand in cleaning up the back. We might actually get most of what we want done in time with her help. She starts her internship again at the end of the month though, so we are trying to get as much done as possible before then.

Emily stayed with her cousin Mason this time on her way home as Austin had moved his family back to San Diego a couple of months ago. She also got to stop by and visit with Aunt Aron. Aron had gotten the operation to remove the huge mass from her thigh about a week ago. The thing was about 6 inches long! The operation went well but she will have to watch it to make sure it doesn't grow back. I guess there is like a 30 percent chance of that happening.

There was a bit of a weather system coming in on the days she was supposed to travel, so we were a bit stressed about that. I did end up dissipating a bit before her days of travel. It did rain a bit on her last leg home. We were stressed out and went out to the meadow to take pictures and kill time between checking on her progress. We couldn't concentrate on anything at home. 

The birds were actually pretty active out there that day. I think they were enjoying the light rain. 

Even the hummingbirds were very active in the driveway. We were getting pretty wet standing out in the rain, but it wasn't really cold. We were mostly a little nervous about how weather sealed our cameras are.

We spent the first couple of days trying to get her unpacked. It is tough finding spaces for all her stuff. We've been using parts of the girls' rooms for storage of one thing or another. She didn't finish unpacking for at least a month last time. By the time she got settled, she had to pack and go back to school again. Also, since she is doing her internships out towards LA, she's been living most of the week with her grandmother, so she hasn't been home anyway! We took a few things to donate at Deseret Industries, which helped a little.

Spring is here and I don't know if it is the extra migrating birds passing through or more local birds have just found our house, but it seems like I am constantly having to fill all the bird feeders. What used to take several days to empty, now gets emptied in a day or two. 

A house sparrow has nested in the neighbor's tree...probably in an old woodpecker nest. The rest of the other kinds of sparrows seemed to have moved on. There are mostly just the usual house finches left, but a family of Hooded Oriole's have moved into the neighborhood and has been raiding the hummingbird feeders.

I don't mind, but they act like a bunch of robbers. They are very skiddish. The male Oriole comes in and checks out the situation before they others fly in. If they see us out there, they will not come in or will only take a quick sip and zip off. When they do come in, they come through very quickly, sipping as much as they can as quickly as they can and speed off. You can sometimes hear them and by the time you check through the window, all you see is the feeder spinning crazily as they take off once more. They usually scare the other birds because they swoop in and out so fast. It's been quite difficult to capture them. They usually take turns drinking. Since they are too big really for the feeder and they move in and out so quickly, they are usually spinning off balance most of the time as they do their thing. When they bother to share the feeder with another, which is rare, it is usually balanced a bit better and they don't spin as much but they don't seem to care. Sometimes they come in one at a time and sometimes they come in and they take turns. The others will perch on one of the cars or even the side of the window to wait their turn. We've looked for bigger feeders that would fit them better, but haven't really found anything that we like. Most of the Oriole feeders are just for jelly and I don't really want to put those out. We have put oranges out for them but I have yet to capture them with the oranges.

After we finished disposing some of the tree branches Christian left for us one day, we took off to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve. Christian and I had watched a video the week before that showed some new birds and I wanted to see. Emily and I decided to go and try to see them before they moved on. Unfortunately, we did not see any of them. In general, here were actually not a lot of birds out. We still got some neat shots, including a Great Egret in mating plumage and there was still a Sea Turtle lurking around, which Emily was super excited to get to see.

Emily was also working on getting her car registered in her own name. I guess her grandmother is done with it and wants to wipe her hands of the whole thing. She originally said that she was moving to Nevada and wanted her to take the registration but that idea has not manifested into anything...again. She has toyed around with the idea at least three times now, even going so far as to start packing but she usually unpacks and stays put.

Spring Break

Christian managed to make it to Spring Break, but just barely. He was sick, yet again from some illness he got from the kids, or maybe it is just all the stress from his job. In addition, another heat wave was coming in just in time for the break. One of the things we were planning to do was to go out to the edge of the desert to see if we can catch the fighter jets out practicing, but it was going to be way too hot to attempt that. 

We made a few day trips out to semi-local areas. Our first outting once Christian started to feel better was out to the San Jacinto Wildlife Preserve.

We got there as the sun was rising. It was nice that there were not many people out there yet.

San Jacinto rarely disappoints. We still managed to get six new lifers including the American Avocet, a Marsh Wren, a Great-Tailed Grackle, the Tri-colored blackbird, American Bittern and a Ring-necked Pheasant.

We even saw some F-16s flying from March Air Force Base. They were a bit far and the heat haze was pretty bad by then, but we did want to see fighter jets...

I don't think we had planned to stay too long since it has been so hot lately. You would think that it is Summer instead of Spring! We wet out early to catch the beautiful morning light and to avoid some of the heat but we probably stayed longer than we should have because there is so much we wanted to see. Unfortunately, we also saw one of the biggest rattlesnakes I've ever encountered just a few feet away from where I was standing at one point. There has been a LOT of rattlesnake sightings this year, with quite a few bites and even a few deaths. This point us on edge for the rest of the afternoon. We were very careful of where we were walking afterwards.

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The next day, we went out to Big Morongo Canyon to join the bird walk again. We got there a little early and walked around a bit before the bird walk and ran into a fellow photographer taking pictures of a new owl family.

Mom and Dad were napping in a nearby tree. The owlets were awake on and off. We took a ton of pictures and video. We were a little reluctant to leave to meet up with the birders. Luckily we saw them assembling and they headed over to the owls as one of their first stops so we joined up with them there.

The group was quite large so it was good that they kind of broke up the group. Most of the birders are satisfied with just getting a glimpse of the birds and will even count them if they can hear and identify the birds by their song. Trying to get a photograph is much more difficult and time consuming so we lagged behind now and then but tried to keep with the group as much as possible. Some of them are very knowledgeable and have very keen sight.

The walk always ends at the nature center where they have a bunch of feeding stations and seats set up. While we prefer to capture the birds in a more natural habitat, it's still nice watching the birds there and seeing what other birds we may have missed.

It is also nice to sit down and just watch their shenanigans there as they jockey for position or take a bird bath at one of the watering stations. I saw an intrepid squirrel position himself on a tree branch close by so that he can make a leap for one of the hanging bird feeders. There were actually a few too many squirrels nearby scavenging many of the fallen seeds but the one that made it into one of the feeders sat and stuffed himself before escaping with all he could carry in his pounches.

We managed to collect another six lifers: the Hooded Oriole, Scott's Oriole, the Western Kingbird, Lawrence's Goldfinch, Bell's Vireo and a Swainson's Hawk. There was also a Barn Owl heard in the area not far from the Great Horned Owl family but we were not able to locate it.

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Our last outting was back to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve. We decided to head into the main entrance since we haven't been to that side of the Preserve yet and there were a few parking spots available when we arrived.

There was actually so much going on that we did not make very much progress into the Preserve for quite some time. We spent a lot of time trying to capture the Barn Swallows but they fly so quickly and erratically that it is really a challenge. There is a definite limitation of my extra long lens, which is that it is just not fast enough to be able to capture things like that. Christian's lens does not quite have the reach of mine but his is a lot faster. The other really exciting subject we came upon was the sea turtles. They would come up for air very briefly but once they go back down, you cannot see where they are and where they will come up next. When we finally pulled away from the swallows and turtles, we got distracted by the Elegant Terns feeding.

The trails actually go farther than you think they do and there are a few branches that we still have not explored but we finally made it to the other side where we normally visit. Of course, we then got excited and distracted watching an Osprey on the hunt. I tracked him for quite a while but when he finally decided to dive down to grab a fish, he was on the other side of the berm so I missed it! I did catch him carrying off a rather big fish in the distance with a seagull making a brief attempt at stealing his prize.

By this time, it was getting late. We were losing daylight and we had a long walk back to the other side. We didn't actually make it to the other parking lot but there wasn't much left and we have walked that last leg many times already so we slowly headed back to the car. As I walk slower than Christian and he has a full frame sensor on his camera (so he still had enough light to take pictures for a bit longer), I headed back first.

We collected four or five more lifers! We spent the rest of our time trying to process all the pictures and videos we collected over the past week.

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On Monday, Christian headed back to work and I prepared to have to go to jury duty. I thought I was going to get away with not having to go in but they pulled me in on the very last day. Apparently, it is very risky going in at the end of the week because that is when they are choosing for a lot of long trials. 

March

Last month, Aron had a pretty serious health scare. She had been dealing with a weird growth on her thigh but between flying out to Oregon to care for her mother and dealing with Terry's deterioration and inevitable death, she had not done anything about it. She had finally gone in to get an MRI back in February. A biopsy was then ordered at the beginning of this month. It was a malignant tumor but because  of where it was, it rarely metastasizes so they should be able to remove it. The whole thing was pretty stressful because she would get information on her health tracker app from the doctor but they didn't really contact her to explain what was going on. She had to research it and contact them herself. She had to find an Oncologist to operate in Utah because the ones in Nevada didn't seem to want to do it?! She was afraid to lose function in her leg but the operation later in the month went well. She will have to keep an eye on the situation because there is a 30 percent chance that it will re-grow. She is just healing now. It will take some time as the mass was nearly 6 inches long.

Meanwhile, we spent most of the month just taking pictures of our birds in our driveway and neighborhood. It takes a lot of practice and trial and error over very complicated camera settings to see what will work for us and what we are doing. The manuals don't really explain very much of it.

We also finally heard from the DMV regarding the registration on Terry's Trooper, so we went about getting it smogged and paying the registration fees. Thankfully it passed. Now we just need to wait for the title.

It is spring and the flowers have started blooming. The birds are pairing up and gathering materials for their nests. We've been working in our garden more. The neighbors' dog is not out there constantly barking at us anymore. We've been trying to make it nice out there again and try to enjoy it. They had gotten rid of the most troublesome dog. They still have one, but they don't put it out that often and without the other dog, it doesn't constantly bark...for now, anyway.