Vacation Journal

We’ve taken it very easy the last three days.  With the exception of a ten-mile drive to Ridgway on Friday to eat lunch at the True Grit Café, we haven’t left Ouray.  We’ve spent almost all of our time at our RV.  We took a 30-minute walk each morning and a bike ride on Friday afternoon.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time the last three weeks watching the local birds eat the peanuts I put out.  We have three kinds of birds that come to take the peanuts off the top of the wooden fence behind our RV – Steller’s Jays, Magpies, and Crows.  They each have their own characteristics.  The Steller’s Jays usually work in pairs.  They will land and then pick up and set down several peanuts before they find the one they want.  I’ve noticed they typically reject the peanuts with only one peanut inside or a peanut that seems light in weight.  Once they find a peanut they like, then they fly off into the trees on the mountain immediately behind us to hide the peanut.  They do this as fast as possible while their mate is getting a peanut.  Each Jay returns as fast as possible to get another peanut.  When two pairs of Jays are working the peanuts, they scream at each other and try to chase away a Jay from the other pair.  In the end, each pair gets its share of the peanuts.  The Jays hop along the top of the fence to get to the peanuts.

Magpies walk along the top of the fence, but they look clumsy.  They frequently knock peanuts off the fence.  They keep picking up peanuts until they can finally get two peanuts to stay in their beak at the same time.  Then they fly off to hide them but sometimes they just go off and eat them.  They are larger than the Jays, but they tend to not land on the fence when a Jay is there.  When they try to eat the peanut, they hold if with one foot and hit it with their beak.  I often wonder how often they hit one of their toes.  They look very clumsy doing that.

Crows just eat each peanut they get, sometimes they try to eat them on the fence top and sometimes they fly off to eat the peanut.  The Crows get very few peanuts out of each batch.  I estimate the Jays get 80%, the Magpies get 15%, and the Crows get 5%.

The birds apparently have learned to keep an eye on the fence top.  When I first started this three weeks ago, it sometimes took them 5 or 6 hours before they showed up to get the peanuts.  Now it seldom takes longer than 15 or 20 minutes.

We also got one new bird for our life lists – Brewer’s Sparrow.  I was trying for three weeks to identify the sparrow-like birds that eat off the ground around the RV park.  I finally got some good, long, close looks at them.  Our bird books basically describe them as being a bird with very few distinctive features.  That’s correct.  That made them very difficult to pin down.

The RV Park is about 80% full.  As I recall, last year it was essentially full on Labor Day weekend.  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect gas prices have had some impact this year.  I filled up on Friday.  It cost $3.299 for the middle grade.  That’s a new record high price for me.  We’ve been watching the news about Louisiana and Mississippi and the effects of the hurricane.  I feel sorry for the people, but I’ve always thought that New Orleans would flood someday ever since my first visit there.  They were totally dependent on 24 pumping stations to pump out any water that was in the city, including their own processed sewer.  The Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain both are higher than most of the ground in New Orleans.  Personally, I don’t think most of the city should be rebuilt if it is still going to be below water level (especially not with my tax dollars).  We did donate online to the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the United Methodist Committee on Relief.