Yesterday was a day to get a few things done to my travel trailer and home on wheels, "Discovery". First I had to do a load of laundry, and while waiting for my clothes to be dried I fell into conversation with a lady "snowbirding" from Wyoming. Her name is Maureen ("as in Maureen O'Hara, who co-starred with John Wayne in 'The Quiet Man'" she told me) and she and her husband used to own a ranch, but sold most of the land which is now used as a wind farm and oil "fracking". It turned out she is also what is known as a "jack Mormon", i.e. someone who left the LDS church, so we got to discussing Brigham Young, the Mountain Meadows Massacre ("it was definitely done by Mormons" she said) and how the Mormons were the original settlers of much of southern Nevada including, ironically, Las Vegas. It was a fascinating discussion, and I plan on visiting her and her husband at their RV across from me for some more conversation...Then it was time to get that darned dripping faucet fixed. I tend to be cautious when it comes to doing repair work of any kind -- I don't want to make it worse -- so I asked my friend Felix, another snow birder this time from the Ottowa area of Canada, for help as he'd made the offer the day before. He grabbed his tool kit but discovered upon opening it in my trailer that it was his tackle box instead! He rolled his eyes and said "I'll be back", but by the time he came back I'd pried the handles off and plastic fittings underneath. We took a look at the washers, expecting them to be worn, but they looked nearly brand-new, so Felix just turned them over, and when we put things back together and turned on the water -- presto! -- no more dripping faucet. The other item on my "to do" list was to put silicone sealant on the seams and screws of the area underneath the front rock guard where water had apparently gotten into. It's....interesting...that this was a problem Lance was seemingly aware of as in the 2012 trailer model they had put waterproof tape under the rock guard running all the way across; here's a photo of a newer trailer with the tape --
The area of my trailer where water seeped inside is approximately at the left end of that tape in the photo. If the tape had been in place on Discovery, the water intrusion probably never would have occurred. But it did, so I put silicone sealant on the screws and seams and once those areas have dried I'll run clear "Gorilla" tape across the bottom of the rock guard, and hopefully that will take care of any future encounters with water coming through that area of the trailer. Isn't the Internet wonderful? I never would have known this was not a problem unique to me...So with the 2 outstanding issues with Discovery resolved, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon tootling along the roads of the wildlife area, only to find out that the "hunt retrieval club" that I had encountered the day before was still there -- and would be there until Sunday. So while it was not the best of conditions to find birds, the raptors were still around. Here's a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk with a bulging crop, meaning he'd just had a meal --
I maneuvered into a better position where I had the sun at my back, and that's when he decided to take off --
There's a group of huge cottonwood trees on the edge of the wildlife area that has 3 nests in it, and looks like one is getting ready for use --
I call this "A Nest With A View", or a multi-family tree. ;o) And just before I left the wildlife area, I saw this American Kestrel scanning the area --
This is the first time I've seen these little falcons here, surprising as they're pretty ubiquitous in the South Bay of Los Angeles, my home base. Today the 23rd will be another day of birding, this time in the town of Mesquite, 30 miles up Interstate 15, where I'll meet another new friend, a "snowbirding" birder from Alberta who will show me the "hot spots" there...
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