Some early morning rays of sunshine

Al Hansen

Al Hansen

Well-known member




I try to take my dogs out at least once a week to do a little retrieving. Since most retrievers go nuts when they see a tennis ball, that was what I chose yesterday morning. I was tossing the ball in our turn around area just outside the garage. We have had only two rains this year and the last one we were just on the fringe so we appreciated maybe a 1/4" of precipitation that we got. Our temps have been fantastic and week after week most have been in the 80sF. Yesterday it was a glorious 86F with a nice breeze and a 4% humidity rate. When I tossed the tennis ball little did I expect to see such a cloud of dust that Belize and her daughter, Sunny made when they went after it.

You will also see a few pictures of a black-chinned male hummer. Right outside our garage door on the west side, is an ocotillo plant that had been blooming profusely this spring. The hummers really love this flower. I hope to find a picture of the entire plant. Back in 2000 we went for a ride in our Kawasaki Mule and found a very small ocotillo plant that I dug out and transplanted out side the house. It had two stalks about 20 inches high. Today it is 15 feet high and a multitude of stalks.
Al



View attachment _MG_6411.JPG


View attachment _MG_6412.JPG




View attachment _MG_6413.JPG




View attachment _MG_6416.JPG




View attachment _MG_6422.JPG




View attachment _MG_5590.JPG




View attachment _MG_5629.JPG




View attachment _MG_5732.JPG




View attachment _MG_5783.JPG




View attachment _MG_5840.JPG
 
Great photos, as always!

We've been dryer that normal here in Tampa but not that dry! Hope you get some rain soon.
 
Thanks, Carl. It is good to hear from you. How long has it been since you left Alabama? I hope all is well with you and your family. Stay safe. Duck season is only 3 1/2 months away if you have an early teal season like we do. I will wish hard for rain in September. Last year with no rain in Sept. I did not hunt teal.
Al

This is another area I used to train my dogs but had to leave it because of a very thick layer of silt on the top. Sonora made me aware of it when I snapped these shots of her.
We packed up and went home.


View attachment _MG_1559.JPG




View attachment _MG_1560.JPG




View attachment _MG_1561.JPG
 
Al,
Exactly a year since we moved down. We are doing well, just a little cabin fever!
I didn't get a chance to hunt at all least season, didnt have time to scout. Now that we are settled in, I hope to get out this year.
We also don't have the same amount of public waters that hold ducks within close distance like I did back in Mobile.

Take care!
 
Hi Tim,
You have some great shots. You sure were right about an attack dummy. I'm betting that Deuce didn't break from his stride. That is a great looking retriever. Geez, I was just thinking back to the days when he was a pup. It had to be yesterday---

Still raising birds? I am up to 18 now. The Cooper's Hawk kept my birds honest. She got pretty brazen when she would walk into the loft from th e landing board, then decide on which of my pigeons it wanted for brunch. I finally locked my loft up two year ago. I had a blue check badge with white flights roller male that had an all white homer to pair up with. Like I said, there are now 18 including 3 youngsters about ready to leave the nest.

My grandpa from Exira, IA never knew how he impacted me back in 1946 when he put a squab in my hands.
Al
 
Hi Al, great to see your pictures! Sorry to hear that you didn't have much of a season last year. We had way too much water last year so the ducks were scattered and most of the spots we typically hunt were flooded out. This year looks to have much more potential. With classes done now, I dragged out the gear this past week to start getting ready for this year. The old dog saw that and wouldn't let me leave the house without her [smile]

Thanks for sharing the pictures, I'm ready to see the green and blue-winged rockets
 
Good Sunday morning, Scott. Just hearing about what you did and how your pup reacted sure made the adrenalin flow in my body. These "dog" moments carry through for me almost on a daily basis. For example, right after breakfast is when I walk over to a particular drawer in the kitchen and pull out a bundle of keys (truck, house, locked gates on BLM land, and of course the post office box. We live only a 1/4 mile from the bank of boxes that are in the village of Luis Lopez, where we live. As soon as Belize sees what I do, she scoots over to the door leading to the garage. She knows we will be getting into the Mule, yes, it is parked next to my wife's white Prius. By the way, I tell our dog customers that it is the only white Prius in the southwest. Many raise an eyebrow when hearing that---

Anyway, now Sunny, our newest addition to Enchanted Desert Labs, has mimicked her mother, and she too, is there. Well, the teacher in me still seems to kick into gear after not teaching for 17 years now. While at the door, they know that they must sit and wait for a command. This is an easy one, because when I call their name then they head into the garage and jump into the front seat of the Kawasaki Mule. I alternate names, trying to be fair. It is working like a charm. Now I make them do the same thing in reverse when we get back to the house.

I hope you have found all the necessary items to make that first hunt a success. For me I will have to wait to see if we will get any rain during our monsoon season which normally begins right around the 4th of July. Last year during our monsoon season, we received "zero" inches of rain. If you live where we do, the meteorologists start measuring liquid gold by telling us that yesterday we received 1/100th of an inch of rain. Have any of you ever thought about how many drops make up that amount? I do---Last year our last rain in 2019 occurred in early October and the next rain was in March of this year. That was followed by a rain in the beginning of May and that is it so far.

Keep me posted, Scott. If I would be a betting person, I have fingers crossed for our opener to be set for the 19th of September. That means from June 1st, we have only 110 days to wait. Darn it, but that is exciting.

Scott, one last thing. As I grew up and gravitated to listening to news reporters, the guy I quickly attached to was Walter Cronkite and I did see that quote you saved from him---"The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck." ~Walter Cronkite Thanks for using this quote, Scott. It brought back some great memories.
Al

The last time the teal pond had water before duck season was on April Fool's Day of 2019. I took Sonora and Belize out to the spot for some retrieving practice. That is always fun for all involved! By the way, the next rain to get captured in this pond was in the first week of October, so needless to say, there were no F-16s flying around this area in September.
View attachment _MG_2022.JPG




View attachment _MG_2094.JPG




View attachment _MG_2099.JPG

This was the first time that Belize was able to get a mouth full of feathers. The Gambel's quail unfortunately hit our glass door. By the way, we bought a good wind chime that truly has made a difference since it hangs right where the birds would fly towards the window. When it gets extremely gusty around here, which isn't much, I do take it down. I love the chimes but sanity is also important.


View attachment _MG_5353.JPG
 
Last edited:
Yeah, Deuce acts like she isn't even hanging on him. He is good with young dogs but will usually give them a little growl or snap if they go too far. Not this one, he let's her do just about anything. It helps my sister so that's good. She has only ever had little house dogs so burning off some energy once or twice a week is welcomed.

I wish I only had 18 pigeons. I think I'm in the 30s, I stopped counting. I have 5 youngsters I will be trap training this week. 2 nice dilute blues, fingers crossed one is a cock, 2 recessive whites and one beauty of a black and white. I'll have to get a couple photos of them. I have 2 accidental red youngsters already flying. I'm not a fan of ash red but one has some weird bronze and grizzle mix so it has a cool faded look.
I just put 2 other pairs together in hopes that I can get some other colors. I'll have to cut back hard in the next month or two, just keeping what I really like. I lock the pigeons down from november until at least april or I'd lose them all to hawks. Those Cooper's are brazen little hunters.
I also still forget to close the trap sometimes.
View attachment 20191018_094748.jpg

Tim
 
Got the camera out when I let this out this evening. Youngsters are all trap trained now.
My young ones.

View attachment p2.jpg

The gnats are driving them nuts right now.

View attachment p12.jpg



View attachment p13b.jpg

Some older ones flying with the vultures.

View attachment p5.jpg

My favorite, and tamest, little white hen. She is 1/4 Catalonian but smaller than any of the pure Cats ever were. She looks a lot like a tiny Portuguese Tumbler. That ash red standing by her is a medium sized hen.


View attachment p11.jpg
 
Love the hummingbird shots Al!

Tim, do you raise the pigeons at home or do you have some property somewhere that you raise them on? Your pigeons look great...love the white ones.

Dani
 
Hey Dani,
They are right out in the backyard. I've heard of a few people having them off site but with the amount of water they need and monitoring how much they eat it would be tough to do. If they get too fat they don't fly well at all. Even if they can home back they get caught by hawks more easily.
In the evenings I like to let them out while sitting on the deck. At least for me its fun to just watch them fly around.

When I do use them for dog training I'm lucky that I'm on the edge of town and my neighbor has a hay field basically next door. They only need to fly 400 yards to get back home.
The guy I got Deuce from has homers that can do 150 miles. He can train about anywhere around eastern SD.

That quail-a-thon you are planning sounds like fun. Hope you can pull it off. All those setters would make for an interesting time.

Tim
 
Nice that you have basically backyard training grounds. I just joined a quail lease that is about 15 miles from my house which is managed for gopher tortoises (so also good for quail). One of the gentlemen on the lease has a pigeon coop as well as a few jonny houses for quail. I was contemplating whether I would need pigeons or not. I know that he loses pigeons a lot to the hawks around me (big surprise eh?).

I am sure hoping that I can get out for the quail palooza though it might be that I will have to fly in two weekish increments to the locations instead of being able to have two months off. I am waiting until my trainee is out of training and we have started the new fiscal year to see if the bosses would be good with two months. Not thinking they will be though so I am hoping for the compromise of two weeks in Oct/Nov, Dec and Jan. We shall see. Still trying to figure out the wording for my sales pitch

Dani
 
Thanks so much for the pigeon pictures, Tim. I can see that you have been fully involved with them. Thank you. As of June 5th, I have two beautiful all white youngsters maybe about a week away from hitting the floor for the first time. In another nest box is a youngster that has taken on the looks of one of my rollers which is a blue check, white flight with a badge.

I am contemplating opening up the drop board so that my birds will begin some flying around the area. This time of the year is the best time for the birds to fly because the only birds of prey are a few locals which, by the way, include their worst enemy being the Cooper's Hawk. Saying all of that, I still need them to be out and about but the timing will be set by me.
Al
 
Dani, I am glad you enjoyed those shots of the hummer. We only have a few that are here. The reason for the small number is because we don't have many insects for the hummers to feed on. A large percentage of their diet happens to be eating insects. Since we live up on a hill about 75 feet above the Rio Grande valley corridor, that does make a huge difference. Just having single digit humidity rates on a daily basis is reason enough for mosquitoes to not hang around. I do realize we have a couple of ponds here to attract birds and animal species but with the gold fish in the ponds, they take care of our mosquito problems. Now that I am talking about it, I cannot remember the last time I was bitten by one. Yes it has been years. Of course I do get my fair share of bites when duck season opens.
Al


View attachment _MG_7679.JPG
 
Thanks, Bob. It is called Pure Luck. My camera will shoot a burst rate of 7 or 8 fps. When I saw this particular hummingbird by the feeder she was acting very erratically so I began taking pictures of her. I had no clue as to what she was doing at the time but when viewing the shots on my computer screen, that is when euphoria set in for me. Bob, just to think that the shot was in focus was unbelievable let alone at that very moment closing her beak on an insect that she just caught. I could not have asked for anything more.
Al

Now I need to know what your decoys were looking at. With your dog now in the avatar and her gaze fixated on the same thing as theirs. I love it! I sure hope you are doing well by the way.

Bob, Bev and I planted some Vitex around the house a few years ago and we found out quickly how much the butterflies like them. This bush has attained the height of a good 12 feet by about 10 feet across in width. Bev has been growing some more by seed. When the heat of the summer is over we will decide where to begin planting them.
View attachment _MG_7903.JPG




View attachment _MG_7920.JPG
 
Al,

Those first 3 shots are really exceptional. They appear as though they were painted.

The lighting washes over the subject in a dream like way.

I like that.
Detect languageAfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchFrisianGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScots GaelicSerbianSesothoShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu

AfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchFrisianGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScots GaelicSerbianSesothoShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu
Text-to-speech function is limited to 200 characters

Options : History : Feedback : DonateClose
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top