Posted on

Weather

Rain off and on. Nine inches in the last two weeks. Nice clear weather for the last couple days, but a little cool. Now Canada is sending us an arctic cold front. Rain, snow, and wind in the Friday night forecast. A projected low of 31 degrees. We’ll brace for that.

All this rain has exposed two slide leaks in the coach. The one in the bedroom is chronic. It’s been there for a couple years without us being able to figure out how the water is getting in. We can’t reproduce it with a hose from any direction. If we hear a storm is on the way, we pull the slide in so it won’t leak.

The other leak is a new one. We can see some worn weather stripping on one side of a living room slide. We know what to fix, we just haven’t been able to get the guy out to fix it yet. Our interim fix involves foam pipe insulation built up to two layers, stuck into the gap between the slide and the wall on the outside.

That works perfectly, as long as the wind isn’t so strong it blows the foam insulation out of the joint. That’s only happened once, but then we only tried it for the first time last storm.
Posted on

Birding Etiquette

  You can count a bird if you can see it.  My friend Jon tells me the bird doesn’t even have to be alive to count it.  Even if the bird is dead on the ground that means it was there.  There is one bird that the only Texas record for it is from a dead bird.  It was in Texas for a little while anyway.   I take that to mean that if I’m driving down the road and find a Ruddy Duck stuck in the radiator at the end of the day, I can count it.  Not only can I count it, but if it’s still there the next morning, I can count it again.  A Scarlet Tanager died in a tree at the Birding Center.  Jon got a Scarlet Tanager every day for two weeks!   So I wonder…..  how much of the bird do you actually have to see to make the call?  If there is an unseen bird in a bush and a Cardinal sticks his head out, you don’t have to see the whole bird to make the call.  It was a Cardinal.  So you don’t have to see the entire bird, and the bird doesn’t even need to be alive, you just have to see enough of it to be able to make the call.   Three days ago I was walking on the boardwalk at Charlie’s Pasture.  I saw a feather.  I know what bird that feather came from.  I don’t need any more information about that bird to make the call, so I’m making it.  Roseate Spoonbill.  Not only that, I’ve gotten the Roseate Spoonbill three days in a row now…