Much like our friend Polly who has a birthday month, I got to celebrate my birthday for a whole week. Celebrations began with a birthday lunch at Desert Rain Cafe on our way home from Organ Pipe. We've been there once before and had very much enjoyed it. They bill themselves as traditional food in a contemporary setting. Each dish contains a lease one traditional Tohono O'odham food such as cholla buds, tepary beans or saguaro fruit syrup. This was on Monday ... more celebrations to come.
Because of the refuge's push to renovate the flight pens, we came back early and volunteered to work an extra day this week. So, on Tuesday we got to clean out weeds and other scabby plants from several of the pens in preparation for new water and electrical connections. It was usual weeding work until we got into the "pig" weed. We've had at least three different plants pointed out to us as pig weed and it seems to be anything with prickly vegetation. We weeded and raked and got totally encrusted in thorns and stickers—better us than the endangered quail, I guess.
On Wednesday, my actual birthday, the day started with the monthly safety meeting, held this month at the flight pens. The topic was the new bio-security procedures at the pens. This will involve increased security at the pens including dedicated boots and disinfecting procedures. After the meeting, it was back to Speedy to change clothes and the off to the Arivaca quail facility for the day. We had promised Paula that we would strip out another brooder after finishing with routine quail care (checking birds, food and water sources). This time I brought my own tool kit and rechargeable screw driver. Last time we had two small hand screwdrivers and a wrench. It went much faster with Ellen and I and good tools. What a way to spend your birthday ... disassembling an ancient poultry brooder! But, we did stop at the Arivaca Mercantile to buy ice cream to go with our burgers for dinner. Since the mercantile only carries ice cream in the half gallon size, we've put out a plea to our fellow volunteers to help us finish this much ice cream.
On Thursday, it was once again a race to finish the hydrology readings at Arivaca Cienega. This time we were driving to Willcox in the afternoon to staff the refuge's booth at the nature festival called Wings Over Willcox. We were scheduled for Friday and other volunteers for Saturday and Sunday. After that we were hoping to do some traveling and birding in the Willcox area which is about three hours east of the refuge.
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