Mammoth the rainmaker had done her magic again. The lightning show was starting in the north when I went to bed. Luckily it wasn't ground-to-cloud lightning, but it was a lot of lighting. I woke up after a while and it was raining, then again at 3am, then again some number of times. I failed to get up when the alarm went off. I can get motivated to get up early, but on a rainy camping morning when I have to walk dogs, no.
Eventually I did my duty. It continued to rain pretty much all the time until noon-ish before it finally turned into a spotty drizzle. Carrying my raincoat, I took Molly for a medium-long walk over to the Turkey Roost campground; it drizzled on us halfway, then stopped again. Here's the lake looking all gloomy.
Then, in the late afternoon, we went out to walk alongside the cliffs one last time. In between walks I tried and failed to get a picture of a canyon wren. I know there's one living right behind us, in the cliffs on which our campsite is perched, but every time I see him he's just on the verge of darting over the edge or else he's already darted over and is disappearing.
On the other hand, a yellow warbler stayed in the small oak tree by Mammoth all afternoon. I don't know what he was eating, but he was amazingly busy at it. For a long time I thought it was a Prothonotary Warbler, but after about a hundred good looks at him I decided yellow. For one thing, there was absolutely no white under the tail and the wings were decidedly NOT blue.
Molly and I saw turkeys on both of our walks. On the first, only two, but on the second, there were about four and I think I saw some youngsters. But they skulked back into the 'woods' before I could get a good look.
Also Chickadees, Titmice, Blue Jays, millions of vultures of both species, Killdeer, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, and a Ladder-backed Woodpecker! That might be a first for me.
Here's the Bewick's wren:
Plus a very odd thing--as I was lounging on the picnic table, a hummingbird perched in the tree. Then he buzzed my red backpack and vanished away. And I'd just been thinking earlier that there were almost absolutely no flowers here. The exception is a pale purple flower (probably Western Ironweed) and a scrubby white-flowered weed next to it. So I wonder if the hummingbird has a secret stash of flowers I don't know of, or if he's a migrant stopping off on his way south. Next time we come here, I should put up the hummingbird feeder.
It was amazingly quiet at the park. A few helicopters buzzed by, possibly from the Army base. Traffic off in the direction of Temple, but muted. Dogs barking in the very far distance--and right by my side when we got too close to the deer. No crickets to speak of, just that faint little 'tic' noise of some water creature.
And it was amazingly beautiful, like a landscape caught in oils. The water was glassy and still, although before it started getting dark you could see millions of fish dimples on the surface. Not a breath stirring and while the cloud cover was not complete, it was enough to hide the moon. I knew where she was, but I couldn't see nary a glance of her.
At 8:19 it was 78 degrees outside. Amazing, no? But the day before it had been in the 90s at the time of day. Much improvement, but fall was not there for real just then.
Damn it was lonesome without Edward. When you're not expecting someone, you get on with your business and do your own thing. But when you're expecting someone who can't come, it's just hollow. We had to eat our lovely fajita dinner by our lonely selves.
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