What about the birds!?
Whatever was I thinking? I published the last blog post, but left out the birds! After all, this place is about the birds, also it’s for the birds - this particular RV park, I mean. We enjoyed previous stays, but the character of the place has deteriorated since then; we are unlikely to utilize it again.
Many more of the RVs now seem to be semi-permanents, either for weekenders and vacationers or for local working folks. Nothing really wrong with any of that, except that it makes it much harder to get to know those around you.
Our particular assigned spot, for instance, had a trailer on one side with no one in residence for the week, so no socializing there. The other side was a bit of a puzzle: two women there who remained inside with the shades drawn nearly 24/7. One early glimpse of them sitting at their picnic table smoking was pretty much it.
The vast majority of people here have come for the purpose of riding their ATVs in the desert, especially the Ehrenberg Sandbowl, so there's incessant engine growlings going back & forth. Thankfully (that's appropriate, isn't it) a potluck meal on Thanksgiving day did give us an opportunity to meet some folks.
One woman asked where we were from and when I told her Prescott, we were off and running. Seems that her husband had happened into our town some years previous, and continually talked about moving there. Nothing would suffice but that we talk to him. That was when I found myself extolling the virtues of the Prescott area. What were we thinking?! It’s just very hard not to speak highly of a place that you esteem. At any rate, they are staying in touch, turns out he is a keyboardist and they are a musical family, so we had lots in common.
Now back to the birds. We did not put out our feeders there, the sole reason being . . . grackles. They are numerous in the area, and we would have been inundated with them instantly. Besides them, our bird list at the park and on the river there included Eurasion collared dove, Canada goose, turkey vulture, black phoebe, and Brewer’s blackbird.
When we were wandering the oxbow regions, we added double-crested cormorant, loggerhead shrike (what a striking bird it is!), phainopepla (one of my favorites), the ubiquitous American coot, raven and mourning dove. We also noted great egret, white-crowned sparrow, Say’s phoebe, ring-necked duck, red-tailed hawk, curve-billed thrasher, northern mockingbird and rock dove aka pigeon, which brings me to a Darren story.
A Darren story . . .
A great many years ago, we were in downtown Phoenix near the main post office. Darren was fascinated with the pigeons there, so we sidled up to one and to my great surprise, it allowed me to pick it up; we thought maybe it was hurt, but it turned out, it was just a moocher and knew an easy mark when he saw one. Of course we took Sparky home with us and he became a favored pet. When it came time that we were moving out of state, we had to leave the pigeon behind, but didn’t want to just abandon him. We determined that Encanto Park was an appropriate place for our pet, so with sad hearts, we took Sparky to his new home and Darren released him there.
That wasn’t quite the end of the story, though. Evidently, Sparky had become fond of having a human family; he followed us. Finally, we put him down and ran to hide behind bushes where he couldn’t see us. Not to be deterred, Sparky continued trying to find us as he would land on people’s heads and shoulders. We had to laugh at one gentleman who seemed to be especially favored: he ran and ducked and swatted, undoubtedly going home afterward with a story about being dive-bombed by a pigeon.
Darren acquired a second Sparky later when we lived in Chino Valley. The poor kid was devastated when he and I were caught out in the strongest dust devil I’ve ever encountered, and his pigeon was swept away with it. The wind must have put him down in some distant farm yard that suited him just fine, because he did not find his way back to us.
Okay, a return to our current day wanderings. Here, there, and the next place, we added to the trip list with roadrunner, Swainson’s hawk, Abert’s towhee, and a real treat - a bald eagle.
California, river access, intaglios . . .
In our quest for new territory, we crossed into California and drove northward to get a feel for the lay of the land. We counted it a good discovery when we ventured into a development by the Colorado River Indian Tribes (thankfully shortened to CRIT). There was quite a bit of side channel water there and even a place to launch our boats, so we expect to return there at a later date.
Those explores allowed us to add to the bird list for this trip: red-winged blackbirds, bufflehead, canvasback, vermilion flycatcher, pied-billed grebe, western grebe, great blue heron, kestrel, mallard, northern harrier, Say's phoebe, spotted sandpiper, and turkey vulture. We kept hearing a belted kingfisher; when I said aloud that I heard it, but couldn't spot where it was, it made a point to fly under the platform we had climbed out onto over the water and circle several times so I couldn't miss it, Very accommodating!
Just because we were in the neighborhood, we headed over to see the Blythe intaglios, ginormous fascinating humanoid and animal figures etched into the desert floor prehistorically.
It is tragic how much damage was done to the figures before protections were put into place. The two sign photos below show the difference between 1932 and 1982.
The figures are so large that they can only be discerned in toto from the air. The next photo shows Chris standing near the foot of a 171-foot-high geoglyph.
By utilizing Google Earth, the señor had discovered that there were several intaglios that we had never seen. They are on another mesa top with no road nor signage to them, so we had missed them. Away we trundled off our mesa top and onto a neighboring hill so that we could then say that we saw them all. That's us atop the next mesa.
The countryside around there is plenty rugged. We continue to reserve the idea that we may return to do more exploration. We read that there are also rock art sites thereabouts, not surprising considering the presence of the geoglyphs.
I was jump-up-and-down excited when formations of about a gazillion white-faced ibises flew overhead, so much so that I spent most of the time watching them with the binoculars instead of photographing the spectacle. Only at the last minute did I grab the camera for a rather pathetic attempt to record them. Sometimes I just forget which device to pick up. . .
Cibola, coyotes and a rescue . . .
A primary reason we chose Ehrenberg for our stay is its proximity to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, a huge preserve that
we managed to see a large part of. Although birds are the big draw there, it was no surprise when we spotted a pair of coyotes (if they had
been carrying Acme dynamite, that would have been another matter), and
then it was fun to see another pair further on. After a while, though, the
sightings moved into the realm of “What the heck; how many coyotes are
out here anyway!.
We had quite the interaction with a couple of the critters (we spied 12 altogether over a two-day span). One particular pair was crossing a dirt road, emerging from the brush on one side to have a drink of water from the ditch across the way. In itself, that was not surprising, but we were startled that they took one look at us and decided we were of so little import that they would continue on their mission. The larger of the pair even decided to have a bit of a lie-down in our presence! We crept the pickup closer and closer, but they remained unperturbed. The others that we encountered were also oddly complacent about our presence.
We saw only one deer while out there, but clearly, there are more. In the people category, we encountered a whole two - a father and son who were all adither when we pulled up alongside to ask if they were okay. They were fine, but concerned about a fawn they had rescued from a ditch. It had fallen into the steep concrete-sided canal, hurt its leg, and couldn't get out. They gave him a hoist out of there and mom & baby were quickly away into the brush. It happened so fast, they said, that they weren't sure if the fawn was okay.
As they related the tale, we were astounded to see the two animals emerge back out of the brush and come towards us in plain sight! It was almost as if the doe was showing that baby was okay and thanking them. Again, I got caught up in trying to determine with binocs if the young animal was alright that I forgot to pick up the camera - sigh.
A primary visitor attraction at Cibola is Goose Lake and the accompanying loop drive through surrounding fields. The thousands of birds on the preserve have a schedule all their own; one time through we were greeted by a cacophony of calls from Canada geese and snow geese. As they jostle for position, something may trigger a flock decision to take flight, circle, carry on some more and wing their way away (that wording actually got my brain to going with "A Lion Sleeps Tonight", and so now it will be playing in the background all day).
Other times we were by the lake, the geese were nowhere in sight, but prevalent out in the agricultural fields.
As I slapped and cursed and swatted and swore, I walked faster and faster to be gone from their whining presence and the painful itchy bites I was incurring. One last surprise awaited us, though, and of course I was loathe to pass up pics of a mixed flock of snowy egrets and white-faced ibises that seemed to be in serious deliberations. As I sidled closer and closer to the birds, the mosquito hordes moved in for the kill. I nearly knocked the camera out of my hands as I tried vainly to protect myself. In the end, I managed to snap a photo and hightail it out of there.
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