Hi again! It’s been another lovely week out here in the Gila. I’ve been out in the field a few times and managed to find a bunch of owls. One morning, my partner and I found a male, or more correctly, he found us. We began calling at about a quarter to 5 (in the morning), didn’t hear anything for a while and began walking down the road when he suddenly appeared right above our heads. Now owls are so unbelievable silent when they fly that you can’t take your eyes off them. Unfortunately, my partner coughed and I blinked at the same time, and we lost him. It was still fairly dark outside so started calling again. Turned out that the owl had just flown over our heads to a branch across the road. After that, we didn’t take our eyes off him. Until sunrise that owl had us following him along the road from branch to branch, coming within only a few feet from us. Once the sun was up enough to have good visibility, we started mousing the owl. He immediately dive bombed us and snatched the owl just as it was out of my partner’s hand. This happened twice and we had to chase him to see where he was going. The morning turned into more of a chase than a search. I even saw the male catch a wild mouse once we stopped “feeding” him. We found the female eventually too and moused her. It was pretty cool to find a pair, but they weren’t nesting which is a big bummer. So far we’ve still only found one nest. We had this problem with last year’s study, but were hoping that because of the wet winter that more owls would be nesting.
Camp life is about the same. Once a week, usually on Saturday, Chuck the camp coordinator and his wife El cook for us. Usually some form of BBQ (Chuck loves his barbeque). And there are always leftovers for the next day. My cooking skills are slowly improving. At least I’m learning all sorts of things from watching other people’s modes of cooking. :) Nighttimes out here consist mainly of sitting around the fire, if you’re not out surveying. I’m pretty sure that all of my clothes smell like smoke, but I’m so used to it, I can’t tell anymore.
Last weekend I took a few days off (finally) and headed out to Tempe, AZ to see my favorite musician, Steve Poltz, play at a little bar. It was nice to get away for a while. I did laundry, swam in a pool, took several showers, went grocery shopping, and wandered around downtown Tempe which is a pretty neat little place. All the outside seating for the restaurants had misters, which made the walk up and down the streets a lot more enjoyable in the 100+ degrees weather. The heat was nice, but quite a shock to the system since being up in the mountains where we had some snow flurries just earlier this week. The show was SO much fun. It was great to see Steve in a new venue, and interesting and different than shows in San Diego. I went by myself, but made some friends and even saw one person there that I knew there (the webmaster for Steve’s site). All in all, it was a great 3 days off. I didn’t even really mind the 7-hour drive to and from Tempe. My little car is pretty tough. I even managed to find a Rubio’s in Tempe on my way out of town. For you non-sandiegans, Rubio’s is the BEST fish taco place.
But now I’m up here for the next 3 weeks until I get to take off to Oklahoma for Tom and Melissa’s wedding. I’m sure I’ll be able to head into Reverse (our affectionate nickname for Reserve) or maybe even venture to Silver City and Wal Mart. :) My boss is back home in SD for about a week, so I can’t really leave for too long anyhow.
I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying Spring. Hopefully soon there will be pictures up on the internet that I’ve taken out here so you can really see what living out here is like (think MASH). I’ll be sure to let you all know the address.
Love and sunshine,
Stef ;)
