It is quite difficult to identify the type of Humminbird this is. They mostly seem to have green backs. I do think this is a female, but even that could be wrong. I think it is a female because of the white spots on the tail.
She is here very often though. There are quite a few birds that hang out in our back yard. Most of whcih I am still tring to identify.
Here is Karen cutting the grass. Really all you need to do is pull the weeds that have grown taller than the grass.
I don't know why they call theis a lawn. It is more a mixture of weeds and crabgrass. In Michigan you would kill the whole thing and start over. Here they install a sprinkler system to keep the weeds alive......
We took Pooh and Tigger to the Clark County Dog Fanciers Park this morning. They had a good time there. Pooh and Tigger met a few friends there and so did we.
After a few mins a lady named Nancy showed up with her two English Springer Saniel brothers, one of wich can be seen in the picture below by the tree.
Although there were a few tense moments at first, and a small fight that earned Tigger a time out, they all got allong well. Tigger seems to be tho one that always starts the fights. He will wait until Pooh is checking out the dog and then come up and try to get Pooh to double team the other dog. After Tiggers time out though, they all played well. Alittle while latter a lady named Rose showed up with her female Datshound/Terrier mix named Leia from the Star Wars movie. This dog made Pooh look like a doggie gymnast! All of the people and thier owners(the dogs) were very nice. We are glad to be getting out and meeting some people. The dog parks are a perfect place for that as both of us love animals. Leia was kind of funny because she would go retrieve a tennis ball, only if her person didn't throw it. When Rose would thow the ball, Leia would just look at her. If Karen threw it she took off after it.
As you may or may not notice on the right is place to sign up to get my Blog, such as it is, sent to your E-Mail when ever I update it. So instead of checking to see if I updated it, it will just be patiently waiting for you in you inbox. All you have to do is enter your email address(they do not give it out to anyone) and it will take you to a page where you enter a security code that they provide you. Then they send you an email to confirm that it is indeed your email address. It sounds complicated, but its not. It takes 3-5 seconds to do the whole thing. Try it if you like.
Among the many things I thought I would basically loose by moving to Las Vegas was bird watching/photography. That was a big hobby of mine back in Michigan as you can see here and here. Today I found the Henderson Bird Preserve. I was pleasantly surprised to find out I was wrong. The provide you with a very nice pamplet that you can check off all of the species of birds as you see them. There are reportedly over 270 species. At 100 acres it is much smaller than Crosswinds Marsh in Michigan which comes in at over 1,000 acres, but it is still very nice indeed. It also seems to host a mcuh larger variety of birds than Crosswinds does.
This is a Black-Crowned Night Heron. I saw a couple of these birds in Michigan, mostly at Pt. Mouilee State Game Area though. They seem pretty prevailant in Nevada as I saw several types of these today.
This is a Greater Road Runner. According to the worker there, Road Runners are not the sharpest bird out there. He states that they will take off running and after about 10-15 feet, kind of forget why they were running in the first place and just kind of stop. This one seemed to follow that pattern exactly.
Among these birds here are a Snowy Egret. I thought at first they were young Great Egret but after investigating a bit more they are easly distiguished apart by the yellow feet on the Snowy_egret.
This is a Ruddy Duck. They are quite common here and in Michigan. A very pretty bird all the same.
This is a White-Faced Ibis which they do not have in Michigan. Apparently it is easily disturbed as they all jumped up and flew away shortly after my arrival.
If you are looking for plane spotting info you can look here also:PlaneSpotting
Today we found a great spot to go see the fighter jets land at Nellis. We were on North Las Vegas Blvd which seems to run parallel to one of the runways there.
There were quite a few different aircraft there including this F-16. In addition there was an A-10 Warthog that we saw flying over North Las Vegas with a couple of F-16s. The Warthog picture is not here because it didn't come out good.
This is a F-15 from the State of Missouri I believe, or as Karen likes to call it the State of Misery.
Overall we saw about 16-20 jets land at Nellis. We were so close to the jets that you could hear their hydraulic systems as they deployed their flaps and in the case of the F-16s deploying their air brakes which I found strange. I would think that they would try to control their speed prior to turning on final, but that seems not to be the case, at least to my un trained eye. I have several photos of them with their speed brakes on during short final. You can see the rest of the pics here.
The dust devil is a common sight around here, once you get away from the city.It looks just like a small tornado.
