It was partly to measure the walk and partly to start Ellen's entry into eBird's "eBirder of the Month" challenge. The challenge is to bird the same location at least 15 times during November and submit "no-X" checklists each time. That means counting (or estimating) all the birds seen. We spent 3 hours and saw 20 species (two of which, Dusky Flycatcher and Bronzed Cowbird, were life birds) and several sparrows yet to be identified. Fourteen more walks to go but I'm not sure we'll have that much time.
This took all morning. After lunch, Ellen spent the afternoon trying to figure out the new birds and sparrows from photos we took. She was able to confirm the Bronzed Cowbird and Dusky Flycatcher, but the unknown sparrows are still a mystery. The Bronzed Cowbird is rare enough at this time of year, that she had to submit a photo with her eBird submission.
As we were leaving the Visitor Center, I noticed a plastic bag clipped to a branch in the garden by the entrance. I took it off and it contained a little note beginning "You Found Me, I'm Yours!". It also contained two miniature bird paintings. We brought it in to Dan, who didn't know anything about and said it was ours. They are really nice paintings.
Later we found out from Evelyn, one of the other volunteers, that a woman had come into the visitor center and asked if she could leave the package somewhere. She had been walking and seen the bag clipped to a bush and it contained the note and a pair of earrings. She was just passing it on with a couple of her paintings. I couldn't quite make out the name on the art, but tried a couple of unsuccessful online attempts to locate the artist.
We've repackaged the note with a couple of refuge patches and pins and will place it somewhere new in the next few days.
I decided to take a bike ride on one of the refuge back roads. There is a loop that runs from just outside the volunteer compound. It goes north (Road 225) a bit, then east on Road 249, wrapping around for about 10 miles and coming out on the Pronghorn Loop, the auto tour loop near the visitor center. I had no concept of what the road would be like. It looked like smooth dirt at the Outpost end.
As I started down the road, I quickly realized that it would be too rough for Speedy. At first I thought that it would be a road for the Subaru, but that was until the first rutted damp spot where ruts would have been too deep, then came the washouts, the rocky outcrops, the sand and the wash. It would be a good road for Ellen's brother's Grand Cherokee which is totally fitted out for this kind of road or non-road. As the road climbed a bit, there was a stunning 360° view of grasslands and the mountains ringing the refuge. I managed to travel through this at about six MPH and covered about 3.5 miles when I noticed that my rear tire was soft. I tried to pump it up and got it to about 30 PSI, not much. Since I was only about a third of the way around, it seemed prudent to turn back. I got about a half-mile when it went completely flat.
I had a spare tube, not a problem ... or so I thought. I pulled the wheel off, removed the flat tube, installed the new one and took out my trusty Mountain Morph pump. I've had this pump since my first bike trip to New Zealand in 2002. I've rebuilt it a couple of times. It worked yesterday to top off both bikes. It seemed to work about 10 minutes earlier. This was now the time that it decided that it had had enough—no pressure from the pump. I took it apart and it was done.
Time to walk back. I put the old tube back on the wheel and the wheel back on the bike and started walking. It actually wasn't a bad walk, even pushing a bike with a flat, about half the speed of riding on this road. It was time for a later than usual latte when I got back.
I got out the 12-volt pump that we carry in Speedy (supposedly it will fill a Speedy tire, but I'm a bit unsure of that), pulled the tube again and determined that I'd gotten a pinch flat. This is when you hit a bump hard enough to drive the tube into the rim, pinching it between the rim and the ground and leaving a pair of holes that look like a snake bite. Being a bit late in the afternoon, I just replaced it with the spare tube and pumped it up, much easier with a powered air-pump.
By the time I finished the wren was berating me again, so it was time to leave him to his evening perch and retire to Speedy for dinner.
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