BEST IN SHOW

We took a long weekend and went home to Florida for the Beaches Sandcastle Contest. We found a cheap (and direct) flight out of New Orleans, so we spent a few hours in the city, taking in the sights and eating at one of the open-air restaurants. Here we are in front of Jackson Square:

The sandcastle contest was on Saturday morning. The start of the 2 hour contest looked something like this: During the contest, we paused for photo ops with Amber and Ryan: The finished product looked great! A landscape of 4 pilings with a pelican and a rock jetty in the background. The boys won Best In Show (second year in a row)! Although I was technically part of the team, I lack creative and artistic abilities, so I was basically the water girl (running buckets down to the ocean for sand-packing water - I stopped counting after the 7th...) We had a great time, got some good (and bad) sun, and enjoyed a celebratory lunch afterward. After lunch, we returned to the beach to do some swimming and found a ghost crab hanging out by the boys' sand sculpture. Weird for it to be out during the day... We wonder whether it thought the rock jetty was real, because it climbed up into it right after we took this photo! Or maybe we just built our sculpture on top of it's home...
We had to leave Sunday, but not before a good-bye lunch with the Birdsongs at the Fish Company! Jean joined us too of course! We didn't get to spend as much time with her as usual this trip, but it seems we never do on these long (but not long enough) weekend trips...

RIVERFEST & RIVER-FLOOD

This weekend was the annual RiverFest event in Vicksburg. It's a mix between a music festival, carnival, and flea market - a unique event for a unique town. The headliner this year was Rick Springfield, but there were a lot of blues and soul groups. We started the day with a few hours window-shopping at the booths and taking new photos of the river at the estimated peak level for this flood. These pictures were taken at the same "parking lot" next to the Horizon Casino (where we posted pictures from about a week ago). The wooden planks have been added (with tar in between) to hold the Yazoo River behind the flood wall. The water level is just below the 51.6ft flood mark from 1973. And although you can still see that "No Parking" sign, it's not like it was last week!

That evening we went over to Sandy's apartment (always the gracious hostess) to celebrate with our coworkers. We overlooked the goings-ons from her balcony, listened to the music from the south stage (a stones throw away), and eventually ventured out into the crowd. We didn't take many photos, but here are a couple of Jon riding The Bull and some of the group looking on as another party-goer gives it a shot.

THE BIG 400!!!!

Hooray! My LifeList topped 400 today!! I spent a few hours at Ramsey Canyon Preserve (TNC) this morning and saw/heard 5 new species. Starting out, right there between the parking lot and the visitor center was a Whiskered Screech Owl (one of the volunteers pointed it out to me): Then I heard a Dusky-capped Flycatcher while walking around one of the loop trails, where I also came across the protected pond where a population of Ramsey Canyon Leopard Frogs lives (see them in there?):

Back at the visitor center, I sat around and watched the hummingbirds for a good long hour. I saw 6 different species of males (the females are a little hard for me to ID), 2 of which were new to me: the Blue-throated and Magnificent Hummingbird! And what a great bird to be my number 400! Magnificent (just below center in this photo)!

After hiking the mile up to the overlook (about 700ft elevation gain), I saw a Hutton's Vireo on the way back down the switchbacks. Here is my photo at the "top" (Miller's Peak was actually quite a bit further up the mountain, but I didn't have time to go all the way up):

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good day, and a great way to end this trip! Next month, I plan to see the elusive trogon...

BUG SUCKERS

I'm back here at Fort Huachuca and actually sampling this time around. We're halfway through our week and have completed 5 out of 8 sites. Our technique has much improved over the past 2 days!

This is our new collection method: the Bug Sucker 2008 (created by Robert and Neil). No more backpack vacs for us, and no more wimpy dustbusters... this thing actually works!

Pam, Rick, Robert, and I - ready to sample our first plot.

And off they go... We're each walking a transect and collecting everything on flowers.

Some of the neat pollinators we've collected so far (native bees and butterflies).

These European honey bees are stealing pollen from each other (kinda funny, eh?)

And this is how we'll store our samples, once they've been identified (these are just practice samples that we'll be using for our reference collection).

FLOOD STAGE

For those of you who haven't heard, the Mississippi River is above flood stage (43ft). Right now we're just under 47ft, with expectations to reach 48ft tomorrow. Don't worry about us, we're high and dry on the south end of town (and our house sits on a hill), and the downtown area is protected by a US Army Corps of Engineers flood wall. However, the delta north of town is extemely flooded and some areas south of us are flooded as well (roads covered in water, etc.)

Here is a view of the high, rushing water under the Mississippi River Bridge (photo taken near the Ameristar Casino):

Moving downtown, this is a view of the parking lot next to the Horizon Casino (just through that blockaded Exit) on the Yazoo River:

And here is the Horizon Casino, floating. See that structure off to the right? That is the outer portion of the "slip" where the casino boat is usually dry-docked. Also, see those flood level markings on the flood wall? Remember them from an earlier blog post (Mother's Day weekend, May 2007)? Compare the pictures to get an idea of how different it looks. The lowest mark (the lowest white bar on the right side of the flood wall) is at 47.5ft.

Another view, from the flooded parking lot, of the swollen Yazoo River: