After our long weekend in the far southeast of Arizona, the rest of the week was fairly quiet. We spent most of Tuesday catching up with Speedy chores and laundry. Wednesday also was quiet as we sat in at the Visitor Center substituting for Chuck and Betty who were away giving snake presentations at the Yuma schools.
We started by cleaning up the crime scene in the plaza outside of the VC. Some small bird, probably a phoebe or a flycatcher, had met its demise. All that was left was a cloud of gray feathers and a pool of blood. I considered putting up little pylons and crime scene tape with a chalked outline on the ground, but settled for sweeping up the plaza and washing off the blood.
Ellen greeted visitors during the morning while cutting up scrap cardboard for the quail facility. I went off to check the quails in the flight pens. It has become a harder job since the birds from two pens have been combined into one while one side of the flight pens is reconstructed and upgraded. One of the pens now has 50 birds in it. While they still have plenty of room to roam around, they are now a bit more nervous and tend to flush more easily. They are also harder to count. As a daily task, we have to count the birds while checking their water and food. Usually I can throw a couple of handfuls of birdseed into a corner and they come running for a treat, but counting 50 birds is nearly impossible since they are continually moving around. I haven't gotten any higher than 40 birds in that pen and I know they are all there.
Thursday was our usual day at Arivaca Cienega. We first checked the quail in the morning, then went off to do our weekly hydrology measurements. In addition to the usual work, we were meeting with Richard Conway, the retired geologist who started this project, to discuss measuring the flow of Arivaca Creek. In an area called Honnas Pond, there is a USGS weir and gauge just above the pond.
The automated station was deactivated by the USGS several years ago after a flood washed out the gauge and altered the stream profile. Richard had ordered some depth loggers that I'd been interfacing to software that he wanted to install in the bottom of the creek just above the weir. We were meeting to figure out how to install it to start remeasuring stream flow. Unfortunately, he hadn't realized that there was quite a bit of water in the creek at that point. Richard had expected it to be dry. That part of the project will have to wait until the creek goes dry probably by next June. We will be long gone by then; this is a job for another volunteer.
However, we did decide that we could do weekly stream flow measurements using a hand-held flow meter at the weir (actually a small dam). We mentioned that we would only be continuing for another six weeks or so before leaving. Richard suggested that we might want to move to Arivaca. Ellen didn't think much of that idea but we will do the measuring until then.
After meeting with Richard, we walked the Arivaca Creek Trail looking for visitors, birds and trash to pick up. Roving the trails is supposed to be part of our weekly visits to Arivaca but we just haven't had the time. The first visitors we met, right in the parking lot as we arrived, had a complaint about cattle dung on the paths. We'd gotten the same report from a visitor at the VC the day before. Cattle are not allowed to graze on the refuge.
Sure enough, we didn't get far down the trail before find a large, rather fresh, pile right in the middle of the path. This continued along the entire loop. I cleared at least two dozen such droppings in various states of freshness (using a big stick). This cow had been hanging around for a while and evidently liked using the trail. We didn't find it but have reported it. Maybe things will be cleaner next week.
We'd originally planned to take Friday off. Our friends, Peter and Diane, had been travleing west and had been in Tucson since last weekend visiting an old friend of Peter's. They were going to come down to the refuge on Friday. The best laid plans don't always work out and Pete had pulled some back muscles (we hope) and had to beg off. They are on their way home now. We'll see them in a couple of months.
Since we had a bit of free time, we went back to the creek to try our first flow measurements and to determine the shape of the weir dam. I was going to attempt to develop an algorithm to convert water velocity at a point in the stream to volume of flow. Richard had provided me with some data from the USGS for converting gauge height to flow, but it was based on the stream profile before the flooding. I was going to use the shape of the weir and a measurement at the weir to generate a similar function, at least for a limited set of gauge heights.
We took our measurements and came back to the outpost where I spent some time doing the math to come up with a reasonable method for computing volume of flow. Maybe it will work. We'll see next week if similar measurements give comparable results.
On Saturday we went back to Brown Canyon to assist Craig with this month's public hike. This was an important one for us as we have been asked to lead a private hike next week. While it started chilly, it was a beautiful day up in the canyon. There was more water in the stream coming down the canyon than we'd seen in the past but oddly there were fewer birds. We had a fairly large group of eight hikers plus us three, but they moved along well and Craig kept an even pace up to the rock arch at the top of the canyon.
One of the highlights was an eagle soaring along the canyon cliffs. The rocks near the top of the canyon contain a Golden Eagle nesting spot that we try to show hikers. Just as we pointed out the nest, a Golden Eagle flew over. It was unrelated to the nest as we are well out of breeding season, but it was a nice juxtaposition.
It was a good hike and we will be back in the canyon on Monday and Wednesday. On Monday, we will be doing a hike up the Jaguar Canyon Trail, one that is rarely hiked, with most of the volunteers, plus Dan, and Wednesday we will be leading our first Arch Canyon Trail hike. It should be an interesting week.
Photos from Arivaca
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