Miscellaneous Items

This is an Abert’s Towhee. They have a very limited range mainly in Arizona. They are considered a Sparrow albeit a large one being about 9 inches in length, long tail included. They have all brown coloration with black markings around the face.

This shows one of the trailers that belongs to a seasonal renter who will be here five months during the winter. The fellow is out there watering and caring for his lawn almost daily. He says he has an agreement with the burros, he waters it during the day and they mow it at night. There are not many other trailers in the park that have lawns.

This little bird is a Ruby-crowned kinglet. We see them in the Mesquite tree that shades the back of our trailer. They are constantly in motion and I probably took 237 pictures of tree branches, foliage, and blurred bird images before getting this half decent image. They feed on small insects they find in the tree. They do not show the ruby colored feathers on the crown of their head, for which they are named, very often.

We had mentioned the golf course in a previous post. This is a picture looking down the 9th fairway from the green towards the tee box. The burros are munching away, mowing the fairway as it were. And some golf course owners and users believe that Canada Geese are a nuisance and big problem.

Speaking of golf, the golf balls on this table were found out on the course. When you start play you mark your golf ball with an identifier so you know it's yours. If it gets lost on the course and a person finds, it they return it here and you can look for your once lost ball to see if anyone returned it. Seems a decent thing to do.

In a previous post we mentioned the Phainopepla and showed a black, somewhat shiny male Phainopepla. This picture shows a female Phainopepla, overall grayer in color though fairly identical in structure and appearance to the male. She appears to be scratching, maybe she has fleas or other bugs. Fun picture.

This is a more standard pose for a female Phainopepla so you can better see what she looks like. According to "All About Birds" on the Internet - The Phainopepla is particularly notable for its enigmatic pattern of breeding twice each year, in two different habitats.

These folks in the park are big Seahawks fans, as are many people throughout the park. They have this elaborate set up for watching the games. Be sure and note the sign “In Dog Beers I’ve only had Two”. Cute.

This is a view from the other side of the “Hawks Nest”. You can see the big screen TV just to the left of the word Seahawks. During the Monday night Seahawks game there were a lot of people hooting and hollering as the game went on. Everyone is invited to attend. The folks who own this set up have NFL Ticket and have both College and NFL Games on frequently.

We had mentioned “Don’t Drink the Water”. Here is a triple filter. The first filter is a sediment filter and stops the big chunks. The second filter is finer filtration and removes other particles and the third filter is a carbon filter and removes the rest of the bad stuff, hopefully. You change the filters out as they get used up. The sediment filter most frequently.

This is an Anna’s Hummingbird. There are a lot of hummers around here though not many different species. Many people have feeders hanging out and still our goes down rather quickly from all the activity. We will see different species of hummingbirds as we get further south. Fascinating birds to watch.

Here is your "How to Cook a Turkey" lesson. For Thanksgiving many people deep fry their turkey. The fellow who owned this equipment was getting ready to cook the bird. What you can't see in this image is that he was quite a ways from his RV in case there was a flare up or an accident with the hot oil.
He said he used the whole box of peanut oil that you see in the picture, heated it to 350 degrees, put the turkey on a metal rod device that went through the turkey and had a handle on the end for placing the turkey in the heated oil and for taking it out. He said it takes 3 minutes a pound so a 15 pound bird takes only 45 minutes. There is no stuffing in the turkey. That's how he cooked it and has been doing so for 15 years. Has anyone used this or a similar technique for cooking their Turkey?