A Busy Work Week

It was cold every morning this week with a low of 23° yesterday morning, but after the sun rises the temperatures rise with it into the 70s. But in the meantime, it's a very cold bike ride the mile and a half to the visitor center and refuge headquarters.

We started the day preparing to survey the refuge's 80-plus back-country campsites. We will eventually visit all of them, cleaning them up if necessary, trimming any high grass, rebuilding fire pits, taking current photos and recording the coordinates of each site to update the campsite database. We originally thought that we might start with the sites just outside the refuge entrance road since they were close by but the truck we had was nearly out of gas. Since the maintenance yard fuel tanks were getting low, we opted to drive to Arivaca for fuel. Also, the price of gas is much cheaper in Arivaca than on the refuge, so buying gas off-site is preferred.

As we were going to Arivaca anyway, it seemed reasonable to start with campsites near there. There is a loop of about six sites that starts from the Arivaca Road. The Arivaca Road just about bisects the refuge so this is where we started our campsite survey project.

Ellen was a bit surprised when I got out of the truck, a Ford F-250 4x4 pickup, and locked the front wheel hubs (yes, it has manual locking hubs just like our old Scrambler). When she asked what I was doing, I reminded her the campsite descriptions said 4x4 access only. It didn't take long to see why. About 50 yards in, we hit the first uphill washout. The truck performed well, even in high range, and has very high clearance. The road barely got better as we went along very slowly over rocks, ruts, steep hills and more eroded channels. It took us an hour and a half to go 3.5 miles to check on three campsites.

Think We Might Need Four-Wheel Drive?

All the sites looked like they had been used recently, one had animal remains in it (a partial deer skin and a backbone) and the last one we reached had an SUV in the site (a Toyota FJ Cruiser). It's going to take us a long time to get to all of the campsites if the roads are like this one as we only did about 20 percent of the loop.

Not Much Deer Left Here

We weren't as completely prepared as we thought. One of the tasks is to clear any overgrown grasses with a string trimmer. I had brought the trimmer and face shield, but forgot earplugs. The shield was the screened one that I had used on the Ranch Loop Trail, but the sand came right through the screen. I will have to find a solid shield with attached ear protection for the next foray.

When we got back, I asked Dan if we had managed to pick the worst road on the refuge. We hadn't but it was one of the toughest. We were really missing Robin, he would have loved this road. We also apologized to Dan about scratching the sides of the truck (did we mention the mesquite trees hanging into the road?). He said not to worry, here in Arizona they call it desert pin-striping.

A bonus for being this far out was seeing a juvenile Golden Eagle being mobbed by a flock of Common Ravens.

On Thursday, we went back to Arivaca to meet Richard Conway, a retired geologist who is leading a hydrology study of the Arivaca Cienega. He was going to show us the locations of the sampling points and how to take measurements. We were accompanied by Emily, the current biology intern who has been doing the measurements, and Ann, the refuge biologist.

Richard has been in the area for many years and has noticed the changes in climate and water. Areas that were visibly wet are now dry at the surface. The question that he and Ann are trying to answer is what is the water situation in the cienega which is the low point of a small watershed and has a fairly high water table most of the year. It is a small aquifer of "recent" water. Analysis of the water shows that it is only about 50 years old, so the aquifer is being regularly recharged. Current water use is not excessive but there is concern that the City of Tucson (60 miles away) may have designs on it. It is such a small aquifer that the city could exhaust it in a handful of years, leaving Arivaca and surrounds water-less.

The study has had 17 measurement points in the cienega (and two new ones that were added yesterday). There are two types of measurements, gage heights for surface water and small wells for water levels below the surface. There are five gages (measuring posts set in the ground under water which show the water depth); only two had water over them. The wells are quite shallow and all had water and the measurements showed that the water level is rising, an expected result as we've had recent rain.

After Emily demonstrated how to do the well measurements, I did the rest with Ellen recording the heights. The device used is called a "pinger". It is a reel of wire printed with a foot rule to which a weighted sensor is attached (just an electrode which it bridged when it touches water). It is lowered into the well until it touches water and the reel emits a tone. The wire length is then read at the point it enters the well pipe. All of the measurements are relative to the top of the well pipe, but it is the change that is of interest.

We will probably go out with Emily until she leaves in December. After which we will do it ourselves once a week on Thursdays. We expect that we will also spend at least a morning at the cienega and the Arivaca Creek Trail "roving" the trails and cleaning up as necessary ... a little bird watching might happen along the way. As we were leaving, we spotted a Gray Hawk sitting in a large cottonwood tree, a wonderful sighting as this is a little late for this species to be so far north.

For the rest of the day and all of today, we helped with preparations for tomorrow's Grassland Fair. We did various landscape chores, lining trails with rocks and string trimming the grass around the display quail pen. A significant part was planning a kid's bird walk for tomorrow afternoon. Ellen was asked if she would do it and I'm helping.

Dan has a collection of materials for the kids such as booklets and junior birder patches, but we had to create a checklist of common birds and plan a route. Ellen tried a couple of loops in the afternoon and came up with one about a half hour long. She then made a list of about a dozen common birds that are likely to be seen in mid-afternoon and, with a bit of technical difficulty, produced a two page illustrated checklist for the young birders. We also have a collection of owl pellets to show the kids at the beginning of the walk. It should be interesting.

I was also asked to do the quail feeding for the last couple of days. Normally Dan does it but he was unable to get to them. I'm getting better at it, not disturbing the birds too much. There is one pen where these supposedly shy quail come running up to the gate when I approach their pen carrying food. I have to distract them by casting some seed through the fence away from the gate. It would be too awful to be the one to let a quail escape.

Tomorrow will be the fifth working day of our three-day week. Perhaps hours in the bank toward early release?