Birds and the Bees

While camped near Quartzsite, there seemed to be quite a bit of competition around the hummingbird feeder.  Both the birds and the bees seemed intent on getting their fill.  See the video below.

 

But then I realized that the bees were mostly just thirsty, so a small dish of water on the ground attracted them all away from the feeder - much to the relief of the hummers!

We stayed a bit longer in the Quartzsite area than planned - waiting for some orders to arrive from Amazon and Ebay.  Once they were in hand, it was time to move on.

 So we loaded up and moved on down to the Yuma area.  Apparently the State Trust land area east of Foothills is no longer allowing camping, so it was back to the old regular of Ogilby Road.

We tracked down the elusive and nefarious Wandering Willy of previous blog fame, and after a few days, Ernie and Deb followed us down from Quartzsite to provide a wind break with their rig!

A view of our camp spot near Ogilby Road.

There is lots of historic, and modern mining in this whole area, and claim stakes are everywhere.  Some have basic information etched into the metal plates, other more modern ones have written information in a little container attached to the post.

On a tour out on the Indian Pass road further north up Ogilby road, I discovered some sort of a trap or corral.  It appeared to have been constructed completely from natural wood and branches from the area, but chicken wire had been attached to it, making the 'fence' around 6' tall before it all collapsed.  It enclosed an area about 20 yards across, and had openings where gates may have been?

 

There was a pile of branches that may have been used to strengthen the fence?  Off to the side was this weird semi-circle berm with a hollow in the center, with rocks all around the outer edge.  The berm was 2-3' high and would have taken a lot of work to build.  Something had been burned in the middle, but not sure if that was the intended purpose?  I don't think the berm was intended to collect runoff, but perhaps?  Any ideas of what the corral/trap or berm would have been used for?

 The remains of the historic Tumco townsite and mine were nearby, so a bit of exploration and a few photos were in order, including some very recent mining activity in the area.

 On another day, Ernie and Deb took me over to the mine sites at the end of American Girl Mine road.  There are some weird designs on the tailings piles, presumably to reduce erosion(?).

 We found a trail leading right down to the bottom of one of the open pits, but resisted the urge to swim in the water there!

 As usual, happy hours were held around the fire.  Sometimes it was necessary to watch a hockey game on my laptop at the same time!

As usual, there was a variety of military and border patrol helicopters, a few jets and Osprey flying over, sometimes very low and in the dark.  We also watched the International Space Station fly over using the ISS app, and kept track of the usual commercial air traffic with the FlightRadar24 app.

Next, off to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park ...