We have finally (well, almost) gotten into a regular schedule. We had thought that we could do a half-day Sunday, then Monday through Wednesday to get our (at least) 24 hours for the week. While we had a Sunday assignment, which we actually did on Saturday, it became clear that it wouldn't be very feasible to work for Ann on Monday and get a project for the next Sunday.
It looks like we are going to try for Monday through a half-day Thursday. This isn't ideal as it gives us a long weekend rather than some weekdays off, but it will do.
We were back at the quail flight pens on Monday to help Bruce and Nyla, another pair of volunteers, with installing heated shelters for the quail in the pens. These are low wooden A-frame shelters about four feet long. Each needed to be painted and have a thermostatically controlled heating panel attached underneath. About half of the A-frames had been painted, so I under took installing the heaters and thermostats. Ellen sacrificed a pair of jeans to brown paint as she painted the rest of the shelters. These tasks took all day and freed Bruce and Nyla to clean out excess brush from the pens and install the shelters as I finished then.
On Tuesday we were back at the breeding facility doing the usual general care and helping Paula. After we finished feeding and watering the birds, we embarked on an office remodeling task. Actually, Paula just wanted to put together a tall metal cabinet and fit it into the office she and Hannah share, a rather small, already crowded, room that had had no changes made since Paula arrived. The office door wouldn't even open all the way with Paula's desk interfering.
But no problem is unchallenged by Ellen and Steve. First we had to put together the cabinet, which was a flat pack of rather thin sheet metal. This we did outdoors, where there was enough room to spread out al the parts. It took a couple of attempts to get all the tabs and slots to engage and get it to a stable and (almost) rigid state, but it did come together.
It was now time to fit it into the office. This required cleaning off several surfaces, disassembling the security monitoring system, and moving a desktop cabinet and two tables. After all that we managed to fit the cabinet along the wall behind the door and, as a bonus, the door now opened all the way.
It was time to go into tech support mode, as we reinstalled the security monitor in a new location on top of the new cabinet and moved Paula's computer monitors, laptop dock, printer and UPS to new locations as well (and untangled many years of cables). Amazingly, by the time we finished we had more storage, and more room in the office.
On Wednesday, we didn't go to the quail facility. Hannah went over instead. She wanted to swap her day off in order to attend the 11am safety meeting and the following holiday party. This didn't mean that we hung around until 11, instead we were up early to drive into Tucson to pick up bails of timothy hay for the quail in the flight pens.
Timothy is a rather expensive variety of hay and the only feed store that had it in stock was on the far side of the city (near the tony neighborhoods where they keep horses for leisure rather than work). We arrived just after 8:30, when the feed store opened (they don't open early in that part of town), managed to squeeze eight large bales of hay into the bed of our truck, and were back to the refuge in time to unload the hay before the meeting.
You may wonder why they need expensive hay to use as quail bedding...I did. It is all about location. Timothy is a northern grass and the hay is imported from the northern states. Almost all hay grasses are invasive here and they don't want the hay seed to grow in the pens. Being a northern plant, the timothy hay will not thrive in the hot, mostly dry conditions here, so it makes an ideal bedding for the winter...albeit a bit expensive.
Each month the refuge holds a safety meeting attended by all of the staff and volunteers. A different staff member gives a presentation each time on a safety topic of their choosing. This month's was a video on proper ergonomics for computer usage. How to position your system and adjust your chair and position hands and body to reduce fatigue and repetitive strains.
Only a subset of the staff really spend much time at their desk and none of them have the very expensive Hermann Miller Aeron chair that was used as the example adjustable chair, but it was a useful reminder of what one should do.
It was then party time. The annual refuge holiday party where the staff and volunteers bring lots of tasty food (Ellen baked her great oat and nut bars...thanks to the existence of an oven in the community trailer) and they have a gift swap. It is the one we call a Yankee Swap, They didn't call it that, but the rules were the same. The festivities started with a round-the-room exposition by each person about significant events that happened this year. This finished with an outrageous tale by our law enforcement ranger about a porta-loo on one of the campsites and chasing down one of the other volunteers who was performance testing a rented Ram Power Wagon...he didn't get a "performance award".
We didn't participate in the swap this year, but enjoyed the picks and the trades...and the good food and the good company.
Thursday was shopping day. We decided to try something different this week and try the new Frye's on Valencia Road, south of Tucson. I had to go to a UPS store to send a return to Amazon and it was almost across the street. There was also a Lowe's and a Tractor Supply right there and we were looking for things in those stores. It was not entirely successful.
We did stop for lunch at Tania's, one of the Mexican Restaurants on Ellen's "must try" list and nearby. It was another tiny place in a distinctly Hispanic neighborhood. We were the only gringos in the place. The food was good, but so far, St. Mary's is the top choice.
Since we hadn't found all we needed, we decided to head south on I-19 and stop at the Sprouts and the Joann fabric store in Green Valley. It turned out that all the Valencia Road stores were at the eastern end of the road, right near I-19 which goes to Green Valley and south to the Arivaca road.
After our two stops, we drove down I-19, across through Arivaca and back to the refuge, completing a rather long loop this week. Next week we will go back to the Tucson trio of Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Frye's.
Friday, we were back in Green Valley meeting our friends Rob and Reta to go birding in Florida Canyon. We probably should have stayed overnight at a nearby RV park as our water froze at the Outpost when the temperature dropped to 22°. It wasn't in the hose or the van water lines (the heat tape seems to work), but at the faucet itself.
Reta was unable to go, so Rob, Ellen and I drove out to Florida Canyon (next one north of Madera Canyon) in search of the Rufous-crowned Warbler and Black-capped Gnatcatcher. We didn't find either one, but it was a good hike. We may go back next week and try again, if anyone reports either in the meantime. We also stopped at the Santa Rita Lodge feeders in Madera Canyon and at a couple of spots in Rob's neighborhood, before picking Reta for lunch at Manuel's, a local Mexican restaurant, for lunch.
Saturday was puttering around the Outpost day, otherwise known as time to do much laundry. I also wanted to tackle insulating the water pipe and faucet. Ellen reminded me that we had the same problem last time we wintered here and solved it by taping towels over the top of the pipe covering the faucets. This had the defect of getting wet when it rained (which wasn't often) and was a bit messy. Another approach was called for. I'd hoped to find thick pipe wrap in the refuge shop, but all they had was tube wrap for a 6 inch pipe.
I settled on using the polyethylene foam pipe wrap left over from insulating the van's lines and wrapping and taping split sections around the pipe and over the faucet ends, then fashioning an insulated bubble wrap bag as a hood that could be removed to shut off the water when disconnecting the van. It hasn't been cold enough yet to test it, but it's only December.
We finished off the week with movie night, an Amazon prime film streamed over our recently improved Internet connection to our Roku box.
Finally, what we have really been waiting for—this week's photos
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