I really do live in a pretty special place...After breakfast, I decided to give myself a treat and see if there was any action at the backyard feeders. It's still late February so you can't expect too much yet; things start migrating through the area, and sometimes stay until the end of summer, starting in March. But the first bird I saw was -- a hummingbird, the first one that's visited Faranuf this year. And not only that, it was a female Broad-billed. It was unmistakeable, with a mask behind the eyes and a red-based bill. Hummingbirds sometimes look like they have a red tinge to their bills due to the red feeder, so I looked twice. Yep, this was the real deal. And as it's still winter, Broad-billeds are rare; they shouldn't be coming in until March. Yeah! Though I didn't have my camera with me, and when I went into the house and came back out with it, Ms. Broad-billed was gone, and never came back. Then what seemed like a busload of Pine Siskin dropped by; there must've been at least 35 in the flock --
The were everywhere -- on the ground, in the trees, at the suet for woodpeckers, on all the feeders.
They're small finches with yellow wing edges and, as you can see with the one in the air on the left, yellow stripes on the underwings. There were also at least 4 Mr. and Mrs. Lesser Goldfinches (reminder: get some Nyger seed for them), the Pyrrhuloxia was back after an absence of a couple of months...It all seemed to change overnight. The day before, the usual suspects of Black-throated Sparrows and House Finches. Today, birds I haven't seen here before. The temps have been warmer than normal for at least the past week, so perhaps spring migration is starting early. Then I see another sign of spring -- a Turkey Vulture soaring in the air. Now I DEFINITELY haven't seen one of those since at least October. It was about 3 miles to the north but this time I did have my camera, so I took a photo that verified I'd seen it. I submit observations to eBird, a website that keeps count of the birds, so I sent in mine along with the photo of the Turkey Vulture as they too are rare for here for winter. So it's looking a lot like the birds are returning after spending the winter elsewhere...
Oh, I nearly forgot -- a Harris's Antelope Ground Squirrel climbed up one of the feeders and helped itself to the bird seed. I've never seen one here, so add another critter to my backyard list --
Wonderful. But I had to tear myself away from all the action as it was Discovery II's wash and wax day. Poor thing; she hasn't been cleaned on the outside since I purchased her in January 2015 as it's not that easy to hitch her up to the truck, take her to a self-service car wash, get sprayed with water (both you and the trailer), then take her back and unhitch her. But now that I'm back home, cleaning her is much easier. I'd bought a "blaster" water sprayer at Bed, Bath and Beyond back in LA's South Bay, when I was visiting Dad, just for the purpose of washing Tundra and Discovery, and I had a bottle of Nu-Finish for the wax job. 5 hours later, she was gleaming as if brand-spanking new. Well, except for the front part; there's no reason that I have to do everything in one day, and besides my arms were getting tired. The clouds made an appearance in the afternoon, so it looked like it may be another great sunset. And it was --
It was another example of "cloud streets", parallel lines which are created by the direction of low-lying winds. Just awesome. I'd seen the cloud streets phenomenon a couple of times during sunrise, but never at sunset. And with the classic silhouette of Cave Creek Canyon below, it was the perfect end to another memorable day here in the San Simon Valley on the east side of the Chiricahuas.
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