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Birdman of Overgaard
We haven't seen a lot of activity on the BP website for quite a while. Might be that we could be partly at fault for that? Anyway, the Millers are doing OK up here on the Mogollon Rim, at Overgaard, Arizona. The weather is starting to cool down and it's kinda nice to turn on our new propane space heater in the early mornings for about a half hour. Supposed to be 77 degrees today. Our monsoon season is slowly drawing to an end and that means fall is creeping up pretty fast. These beautiful ponderosa pines are sure in need of rain. Lots of brown needles to rake up all too often. The monsoon season this year was mostly just thunder and lightning, but not much well needed rain with it. Mother Nature's way of letting us know who's boss I guess. This summer, with the help of a lot of wonderful Lazy L park friends we have our deck enclosed and it sure is a welcome blessing. We have almost doubled our living quarters. We have our yard decorated with bird attracting devices. We have documented 27 (or more? I lost count) different varieties of our feathered friends during the course of the summer. 4 kinds of hummers, 5 varieties of woodpeckers, the black headed grosbeak, the hepatic tanager, the white breasted nuthatch, robins galore, lesser goldfinch, pine siskins, buttocks oriole, and the house finch, just to name a few. We are really "for the birds"! We have about broke the budget just feeding the little varmints. Can you imagine $33.00 for a 20 lb. bag of thistle seed just for the finches, sugar about $2.50 for 5 lbs. Our finch feeder (home made) holds about 5 lbs. of thistle seed at a filling. This lasts up to 3 days (sometimes). Suet blocks for the robins, grosbeaks, nuthatches, woodpeckers, etc. We fill our 3 hummingbird feeders every day, and sometimes twice when they are used the heaviest. Of course the bullocks oriole has a sweet "tooth" too. ENOUGH OF THE BIRDS ALREADY. (Damn, screwed up and hit some wrong key and off the memo went and it wasn't done yet, so here is the finale as a forward. Maybe John can figure it out?) Oh yes, we do have other wildlife here too. In this area there are deer, lots of elk, rabbits, squirrels, and we had a fox eating suet droppings under the feeder one early morning. On a short drive from the house a couple of days ago we saw two beautiful buck deer, one was three point (western count0 and the other was at least a forked horn. Well, are you bored yet? On to other things. We hear that Glen and Norine Sletto are back in the fold for the winter. Bonnie says she had a great trip to Japan. That little lady sure gets around. We kinda get the idea that "cold weather Ann" is getting enough cold to last for a while and if we understand correctly, she is about ready to say, OK Bermuda Palms, here we come? Did we get the right message here? In closing this message, we will say to all of you that are interested, we plan on being back with you by the end of the month, but the dates are in limbo as yet. It is only a one day trip for us, so it is not a big deal except we will get to see all of our GREAT FRIENDS at the Palms very soon. Time to close and join some of our Saturday morning breakfast group at the local eatery. Everyone have a great weekend. We will be seeing you soon.Duke and Marlene |
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