Digger -the Desert Tortoise

It's warm and spring is here in Yuma. Digger is the resident desert tortoise at the visitor center. He blends in with his surroundings so well that many visitors don't see him. In this picture -- he's the rock to the left of the post. His pen has a burrow in the middle that he goes down into at night and during hibernation. He hibernated from mid-December until mid-February. He loves to sun himself and we feed him kale and broccoli. Desert tortoises in the wild eat anything the desert has to offer such as cactus and any little bit of greenery they find. They get almost all of their moisture from the food they eat. Desert tortoises have claws instead of webbing on their feet so they can dig a hole to escape the heat.

We took a drive to Casa Grande south of Phoenix to visit some friends. The brittlebush, thats the bush in the picture, was blooming all the way along the highway. It made the drive through the desert beautiful.

Fabulous Birds

People come into the visitor center at the refuge and describe birds they have seen and ask us if we can identify them. We have ten different bird books and other reference guides we can use to figure out what they have seen. You can tell the serious birders -- they come in with their binoculars, cameras and knapsack filled with bird books. They also come in with bird songs on their Ipods so they can identify birds just by sound. Some will play the bird song loud as they walk to try and entice the bird out of hiding.

I got a picture of the Long Billed Curlew out on a small par 3 golf course. Not sure what is in the ground under this grass that attracts them. The other bird is a Pied Bill Grebe. It has a stubby beak with a black bar across the middle of the beak. There are many kinds of Grebes down here now and some are even nesting. We've seen a few baby ducks!

Ferguson Lake

The temperature hit 80 degrees so we had to enjoy the weather and take our boat out on the river. We launched at the boat launch here at the refuge which dumps you into a back water of Martinez Lake. We boated through the lake and then up the river a short ways to the entrance to Ferguson Lake. This is a lake that is a back water along the California side of the river. The water is high now in the river but even so the deepest spot we found was about 30 feet deep. Boating in these backwater lakes is a challenge when the water is murky. Water is being released from the dam to the north of us at Parker which stirs up the muck so you can't see the tree stumps and other obstacles. We barely missed one large tree trunk and the boat lightly bumped into a submerged object but luckily it didn't catch the motor. We usually go pretty slow in this kind of water especially in a new lake.

As we were boating into Ferguson we spied this racoon, in broad daylight, up in this tree that had no leaves. Hmmm - was he trying to get up high so he could see where he was? I also got a good picture of Castle Dome peak from the lake. We boated up into the lake far enough that at one point we were on the California side of the refuge and could see our RV and the refuge buildings off in the distance.

Excitement on the River

We went for a boat ride with some friends. We rode in their big Ranger boat -- very nice. They are staying at an RV park right on the river next to the Imperial Dam. We saw lots of interesting birds and ducks. We explored every little channel and small lake along the river above the dam both on the Arizona side as well as the California side. One small lake had warm springs in it and you could see the bubbles coming up . The water around the springs was 71 degrees while the rest of the river has water in the 50's. We saw bass, crappie, catfish, sunfish, carp and stripers swimming around waiting to be caught.

We were on our way back and got within a 1/4 mile of the RV park -- right next to the dam and the motor died. No problem, use the trolling motor, wrong, the steering cable broke. So now we are dead in the water and the boat has no anchor and no paddle. There was a push pull pole that was about 8ft long so us ladies used it to "paddle". The guys worked on the trolling motor until it could be used by hanging on to the top of the head to steer while running the footpedal. It was awkward but it worked. My friend Betty and I were just glad to be moving away from the dam. The water is right up to the top and where we were there was no more wall to stop you from going over -- thats the picture I took -- along with the one of the dam itself. We were never in real danger because we were within shouting distance of the RV park and could have screamed for help. We weren't being pushed toward the edge and as we trolled to the dock the big motor finally started.