San Luis NWR and Merced NWR

It's been a slow morning here at the Traveling Three Cats Ranch. We spent yesterday evening at the local emergency department. The positive-thinking-head-in-the-sand approach to curing my asthma problem failed dismally. By day's end yesterday, I admitted defeat and we took off for the hospital for my first-ever nebulizer treatment. I'll say more about that toward the end of the post (if I don't forget), but I'll tell you now that even without positive thinking, I'm feeling much, much better today. I'm still coughing some, but the cough has turned more productive, a nice change from the dry choking hack of the past two days.

So let's just back up to yesterday morning. Every variety of fast food is available to us just across the street, and so it seemed a good time to head to McDonalds for our first beloved Egg McMuffin of the trip. It was bright and sunny. The temperature was a little on the coolish side, but we were looking forward to a good day, weather-wise.

The plan was to meet my friend Judy, first at the San Luis NWR. Shortly after leaving McDonald's we drove into pea soup fog. Judy had already texted to say she was running late because of low visibility. No problem...we found our way.

There was a very nice visitor center there. Upon approach, we found this beautiful mosaic...flying geese and a mariner's compass for all you quilting people.

Along the way, this quote from John Muir. We found ourselves wondering what the area looked like 150 years ago.

Inside, we paid our respects to the resident cat, Lucky. Lucky was taken in when the visitor's center was built. She was apparently abandoned, and has lived here for approximately 10 years. The employee at the visitor center said she was already spayed when found, and so she'd been someone's pet at one time. She was very friendly, hanging out on top of a lighted display, where it was warm. She purrmitted petting and posed for her picture.

If she had a pink nose, you might think you were looking at Smitty. Also she's about half his size.

We were here to see the Tule Elk, but the fog made it difficult to see much of anything. The pictures aren't very good because of it, but we documented our sitings, and that's the most important thing, right? The first one we saw was off in the distance...this handsome buck.

Nearby, a red-tailed hawk perched on the fence post. We saw more red-tailed hawks in a single day yesterday than I've probably seen in my entire life. Judy described one of her bird walks with a guide who simply said, "YART," upon siting them (Yet Another Red Tail).

Driving on, we saw a grouping of elk off in the distance. As we stood there more and more rose out of the grass, until we could see a couple dozen cows with this one buck...obviously, his harem.

And since I couldn't get a very good picture of them, I'm including this picture of an informational sign posted nearby. This one has a tangle of grass in his rack of antlers...kind of makes you think he's been rolling in the hay, doesn't it?

I liked this quote from Theodore Roosevelt.

Some time ago, I read a book entitled, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan. It was a fascinating story about a huge wildfire, and the creation of America's National Park System. Roosevelt's prescience was fascinating, and I was surprised at how the same arguments back then are present in our political discussions of the present day. I can recommend it.

From there, we moved on to the Merced NWR where we spent the rest of the day. The fog burned off, and we were able to see a lot of birds. Oh my goodness. My friend Judy impressed us with her encyclopedic knowledge of the many species we saw, as I knew she would. She knew things about birds, I didn't realize were possible to know, if that makes sense.

We started on a viewing platform, where I took this picture of the informational sign about bird migration along the Pacific Flyway. I've bumped up the saturation in the hope you can see the colors of the migratory paths and make some sense of it. Remember you can always make a picture larger by clicking on it.

When the sun came out, our shadow selves made an appearance. Judy's shadow self brought along a spotting scope, which was tremendously helpful. Judy could train it on a particular bird out of a field of thousands and share the viewing and information about it with us.

While standing there, this little bunny hopped on by.

And we saw squirrels the size of house cats. In the image below, I managed to get what appears to be a raccoon. I didn't see him until I downloaded the picture.

And then, we just saw lots and lots and lots of birds. I cannot identify most of these, and so I'll just let you look, adding commentary as we go.

We saw lots of birds in flight, and I'm including a few pictures of those, simply because it was so stunningly beautiful to watch and listen to them. These are snow geese, if memory serves.

Judy explained that the wing tips are often black because the associated melanin strengthens the feathers. Since the outer tips of the wings sustain the most pressure during flight, it makes sense they would evolve to be the strongest.

Below is a great egret. Judy tells us that the snowy egrets have a black beak...or maybe it was the other way round. I can't remember, so don't quote me.

This next one is a coot.

Judy explained their feet are lobed to make it possible for them to walk on marshy terrain. I couldn't get close enough to photograph them, but here's an image from the Audubon.org website.

(image source)

Here's another one with his friend, a "green," was all Judy said about him.

We saw thousands of this next bird on our drive south. This is a white-faced ibis. They are fairly large...a little larger than a duck.

These next ones are "cinnamons."

Next was this juvenile bald eagle. Judy explained that the feathers of the juveniles are larger than the feathers of adults since they are just learning to fly. As they lose their juvenile feathers, they can look rough as the larger juvenile feathers are replaced by the smaller adult feather.

We were hoping to get around to where we could see the snow geese, sitting by the gazillions, but we spooked the eagle. When an eagle or other raptor flies near the snow geese, they all flush and fly off. You can see him in the upper left-hand corner of the image below.

After scaring all the snow geese away, he sat in this tree with his wings spread wide for the remainder of our time there.

This is the one blooming thing we saw during the day.

Here's another coot...he was busy bullying his neighbors and making quite a squawk. It gave meaning to the phrase, "Old Coot," because this guy was definitely crabby.

I don't know the name of this next bird, but the thing to notice is his upturned beak. If I'm remembering correctly, Judy said this is a spoonbill.

We drove around again and came to a place where we could see the snow geese closer up.

And a whole bunch of coots.

In Judy's eyes, this next image of a burrowing owl was the siting of the day. She thought there were burrowing owls in the area, but hadn't spotted one until yesterday. Sorry for the blur. I was shooting from far away, and I've cropped most of the image away to get closer.

So...after making our way around the refuge twice, we still had an hour and a half to kill before we would be able to see the flight of the sandhill cranes. Frankly, I was feeling terrible by this time...coughing uncontrollably, and barely able to speak without coughing. I'm a person who laughs easily and often, and laughing made me cough too. We really weren't up to waiting them out, but we'll be back again next year, and we'll get a later start to our day.

Instead, I have this very short video of the snow geese in flight, intended mainly for the sound, so turn up your volume to listen. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

On the sewing front, I finished up the first snowflake yesterday, and here it is.

As I mentioned earlier, I needed to wash it to remove the Sticky Fabri-Solvy. I washed this in our RV high-efficiency washer. I first placed it in a fine mesh bag and washed on a delicate cycle. To make sure I had enough water, I added a couple of raggedy towels and gave it an extra rinse. I did not use any kind of detergent...just plenty of warm water. I took it out of the washer and hung it to dry, and it came out beautifully. The one problem I noticed is that the size of the snowflake had printed in red on the Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and that did not come out completely. I'm thinking I can probably touch it with a bleach pen to get it out. You can see it circled in the image below.

For the rest of them, I'll just cut this little bit out of the Sticky Fabri-Solvy before applying it to the snowflake block. It's a tiny little area...perhaps half an inch square...and so it should be no problem to correct prior to stitching. I'm offering this up to anyone else who might be using the Sticky Fabri-Solvy for the first time.

Okay, so I'm not sure I have anything more to say about the asthma situation, except that I'm feeling significantly better today, and I feel I'm on the mend. The physician's assistant who treated me encourage me to finish up the steroidal medications I started a few days ago. Today is the third of five days, and we'll just hope improvement continues. We'll be moving on tomorrow, and hopefully find some better air at the next place. Interestingly, he also told us that this county, Merced County, has the second worst air quality in the state, behind Fresno County. We are headed to Kern County, and hopeful of easier breathing.

The kitties spent most of the day alone yesterday, but they got lots of hugs, skritches, snuggles, and kitty treats on our return, and all is forgiven. Actually, I'm not sure they missed us at all. I never know whether I'll have internet access when we move on to new environs, and so I'll get back to you if I can. We're making a two-day drive on our way to Death Valley National Park. Along the way, we'll also see the Trona Pinnacles...just something I pulled from my California folder. So there's lots on the horizon, and I'll be back as soon as I can.