November 15 -- A (Non) Rainy Day, And A Few Travels With Discovery Photos

The rain wimped out, I'm in the last throes of a cold -- and I gave up on keeping the 2 young male Coues deer out of the bird seed. I may just buy one of those tall feeder hangers, the one that you hang feeders off of; they're about 70 inches tall. I did have an interesting time watching the deer; they all visited the water feature at the same  time --- Mom and her 2 kids (oh oh, don't know that happened to the third one), a Mom and her 1 kid (I've seen them here before), and about 5 males, including one with a big rack who ran roughshod over the others. Whenever he was drinking water and a kid would try too, he'd run them off. At one point I must've had at least 10 deer in my back yard -- yet no photos, as I would have run them off if I'd moved; they were extremely wary. I've noticed that some of the deer, even the young ones, have cuts on their ears. My friend Helen speculated that they could have come from ducking under the barbed wire fence surrounding my property to get outside. Sometime during the winter, when I'm pretty sure all the snakes are hibernating (meaning it will be cold outside), I'm going to take the Stihl string trimmer and branch lopper to the overgrown acreage of my property and create animal paths for the critters to get through. There are already faint paths, where they've flattened down the vegetation, but the young ones have to jump over a lot of that because they're so small. And it would just bring a bit of order to those 3 acres, which are becoming increasingly overgrown. But it just depends on how wet the winter will be; El Nino has been forecast to affect this area, with colder than normal temperatures. And I guess I still have to "acclimatize" myself to 4 seasons as I come from southern California, which has only 1...

The highlight of the day (now come on,  I'm allowed the occasional "off" day) was seeing Mr. Broad-billed hummingbird again. This time he was at the feeder in the morning and was aggressively defending it against the Anna's who had claimed it before him. Hummingbirds have a reputation for being "flying jewels" and happily picking nectar out of flowers, but in reality they're quite aggressive and spend most of the time chasing one another, usually defending what they've made their territory -- and that includes feeders. Mr. Broad-billed has taken over a feeder with 10 feeding ports, so I'd say he's quite the feeder hog. But he's hard to resist when he's so striking --

Many of you who are reading this blog have only been following me since I've lived at Faranuf. I actually lived in my travel trailer "Discovery" for nearly 2 years after retiring from Kaiser hospital in April 2013, first leasing out my condo in San Pedro, CA then selling it. The full-time RV life is not for everyone, and after living in a 20-foot trailer I realized that I needed 4 permanent walls, and a home base from which I could do, say, trips up to a week long in "Discovery II" (I traded in the first Discovery for an upgraded model, with solar panels, in January of this year). So, here is a few photos of life on the road before Faranuf... 

The late, much-lamented Tundra I with Discovery I at the cloud-shrouded eastern Sierra, 2012

Breakfast in Discovery 

Double rainbow near Capitol Reef Nat'l Park, 2013

Fall in the eastern Sierra Nevada (I spent 2 autumns there) 

It snowed in October 2013 -- Bishop Creek west of Bishop, CA

I spent 2 winters in Overton, Nevada -- Falling Man at fabulous Gold Butte

2 arches in Valley of Fire State Park, SE Nevada

Veyo pies!  Northwest of St George, Utah

Mr. Magnificent Hummingbird, Portal, Chiricahuas (2014)

House on Blackhawk that I was considering buying, before Faranuf (glad I didn't) 

The next "quiet" day, I'll post some more Travels With Discovery memories...