December 9 - Traveling to Bisbee For A Building Permit, And A Cast Of Red-Tails

Cast being the group name for Red-tails...Other interesting names for a group of specific bird species are a bouquet of pheasants (only when flushed), a charm of finches, a cover of coots, a dole of doves, a murmuration of starlings, and my two favorites, a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens. Looks like the last two got the group names with the negative connotations...

The dawn before sunrise was spectacular once again. And so was the sunset, too. I thought it would be different to compare the two --

December 9 Predawn

December 9 Sunset

And predawn looking to the west, and Cave Creek Canyon -- 

This day I had to drive to Bisbee, about 75 miles away from Portal. As I've mentioned before, I always love to take Highway 80. It's savannah-like for much of the way to Douglas, with waving fields of grass, the way things were before poor land management and overgrazing in the northern half of the San Simon Valley. Here's the view from the road to Rucker Canyon, with the Chiricahuas in the distance -- 

And just to the left of this photo there's an interesting road sign that I've never seen before --

Cattle with no morals? I hate that... 

I'm having a canopy built on my property for my travel trailer Discovery II, which is currently at the RV park in the town of Overton, Nevada. The canopy is being built and installed (for free) by a company whose local dealer is the owner of the Rodeo Tavern and who lives just a few miles from me. (Serendipitous once again.) But, as it's over 200 square feet, I need an Arizona building permit, and the only place to get one is in the Cochise County seat of Bisbee, so I'm on my way to visit with the building permit folks. I come armed with probably too much paperwork, but better to bring too many than leaving behind some of the right ones, and Portal isn't just around the corner. I'm lucky in that the previous owner left a detailed diagram of the house, well house and garage, with their distance from the property boundaries and from each other, and any underground things like the drain field and water line going from well house to Faranuf. I brought the diagrams that were sent by the building company so I knew the dimensions -- but I didn't know the site relative to the house as it hasn't been decided yet, so I approximated, and thankfully that was good enough. And a friend here recommended that I opt-out of an inspection, which you can do if you sign the right papers. An inspection is helpful if, for instance, you sell the house -- but I plan on being here until I'm pushing up the daisies, so I don't need it. And there has been only one major addition on the property since Faranuf was placed here (in 2 sections as it's a manufactured home) -- the York heat pump. So it's not on the diagram, drawn up in 2007, as the unit was installed in 2012. And there may be underground lines running to the utility box which is in the center of Faranuf's driveway. I tell the lady at the permit office that the previous owner installed it, so besides the location I don't have to go into dimension details as it was done previous to my buying the house. So I get it notarized, sign the papers, pay the $65 fee, wish everyone there a merry Christmas -- and I'm done. The permit will be mailed to me and I'll received it sometime next week. What could have been a pain turned out, once again, to be relatively easy-peasy. Afterwards, I could have taken a little driving tour of Bisbee, as it's an interesting town with lots of mining history -- but I want to go back home. My birdies in the back yard need to be fed...And along the way from Douglas to Portal, there are raptors perched on trees, agave, fence posts, power lines both used and abandoned -- I must have seen at least 20, mostly Red-tails but you need to look closely at each one as it may be something "special" -- not that Red-tails aren't. RTs come in all sizes, colors and patterns, so sometimes they're a bit difficult to ID in the field. But it on a 1-mile stretch of Highway 80, it was a lesson in the variety of Red-tails. I pulled off the road and photographed them out of the driver's window, and surprisingly most of them didn't fly away (though a few of them didn't like the attention and took off). But the majority of them were very cooperative -- 

"He" (I'm guessing; female raptors are larger than males, but you need them side-by-side to make a gender call) was a bit nervous and took off -- 

I had the 100-400 lens with me, and wished I'd brought the 500mm one as many of the photos didn't have the crispness and clarity that I'm used to with "They Big Boy". But I least I got the photo.. There were 3 other Red-tails just a little further down on the same side of the road --

Though they may superficially look the same, there are subtle differences in their chest pattern, and the head coloring. Their clear eyes mark them as juveniles or sub-adults; the eyes become darker as they get older to where you can't distinguish the pupil from the rest of the eye. And another cool fact is birds can't move their eyes in their head; they're fixed in their sockets. That's why you will see a bird moving its head up and down to get a clearer view, or entirely move its head to look in a different direction. (Owls have to swivel their heads due to having a larger eye in relation to their skull.) But getting back to Highway 80, it's a raptor corridor in winter. Same with Sulphur Springs Valley, on the west side of the Chiricahuas. Their perches, set against the mountains, can give you memorable scenes --

And here's one more sunset landscape photo, this time of Silver Peak --