El Serrano

The English Sparrow or house sparrow, the bane of the birding world (and known by birders as a feathered rat sharing that honor with the Rock Dove or common pigeon) is alive and well here in Santa Rosalia, specifically at Casa Boleo. We have a big tube feeder and it is covered with sparrows whenever it is filled with seed. This summer when we first put it up and I saw we were only feeding sparrows, I told Esperando we wouldn’t refill it when it was empty. But then the muchachas asked if we would please fill it up again because they liked seeing all the little birds. How could I refuse them when they work so hard? Since the only feed available down here to fill it with is scratch (hen feed), a lot of ‘uneatable’ seed and cracked corn gets cast on the ground. That attracts the pigeons that race around below it to chow down the cracked corn. Now isn’t that just every birder’s dream?




Today’s sparrows are descendents of birds imported from Europe to the U.S. before the turn of the last century. They have populated the Americas as they have most of the rest of the world. According to http://www.50birds.com/ they were imported to protect trees from a caterpillar which is the larva of the Geometrid Moth. Many disagreed with the wisdom of this move and even predicted they would become pests as they fed on seeds and buds, not insects. One hundred Sparrows were released in New York City in 1852 and 1853. In 1854 more birds were imported and released in Portland, Maine and Quebec. In the next ten years, a few hundred more were imported and released in Quebec and around Portland, Boston and New York. In 1869, about one thousand were released in Philadelphia. They were released in San Francisco, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis and several other cities in the interior. Between 1874 and 1876 a few were released in Michigan and in 1881, in Iowa. This bird is destructive to crops, spreads disease and parasites, competes with songbirds, and its filthy habits and population explosion have revealed its introduction to be a huge mistake. About the only positive thing that can be said for them is that they are monogamous.

My Mother hates Sparrows with a passion as they drive all the other pretty birds away. When we lived in Denver we switched our feed over to pure sunflower seeds which didn’t attract the sparrows, just house finches and a little hawk that liked to eat them who would sit on the fence waiting in the snow for any little birds to show up. That’s a multi-use feeder feeding both little birds and hawks.

As I looked out the kitchen window the other day at Casa Boleo and at the feeder covered with a multitude of sparrows and their children, cousins, aunts and uncles awaiting their turn in the bushes and on a wire that runs from pillar to post, I asked New Cook, what do they call that bird here? Oh, she said it is called a serrano. Ah like the chile, I said. Oh yes, she said, like the chile, but really it means coming from the mountains, they come down from the mountains. I just about choked on my cup of coffee—such a romantic concept for a messy piggy little bird that is generally found near human habitations. Ah the joys of being ignorant of the big wide world. In Santa Rosalia surrounded as it is by desert even a little sparrow is welcomed. When you don’t have a lot of birds to look at, except for buzzards, a little sparrow that reminds you of the coolness of the mountains is just the thing.

Taking a little bird bath in the dirt.

Home again, home again, jiggity, jig, jig

Here we are again in the Land of Mañana, we spent the night before last near the SF airport so we wouldn’t have to get up so early. Esperando thought our flight left at 11 am, in fact it left at 7:30 am, so getting up early ended up being really early. We’ve only been gone from Baja two weeks but it seems like forever. While we were gone we heard that the water system had already been repaired in Santa Rosalia after Hurricane Jimena tore out miles of pipeline, but now that we are here it is not yet so. They are using still using water trucks to provide water for the populace. On our drive up from Loreto we saw that the road repairs have held up, and they are starting to asphalt the highway where the repairs were just dirt packed before. The desert is turning really green and lots of things are blooming. The damage to homes near the highway in Mulege looks more extensive now than it did several weeks ago because people are pulling down damaged roofs to start repairing them.

We stopped off at the Hotel Serenidad to talk with Jack McCormick of Baja Bush Pilots who has been organizing an airlift of relief aid for Mulege and Santa Rosalia. One of the airplanes that flew in for the airlift was damaged landing on the runway, fortunately the pilot and passengers were not hurt. The nose was badly damaged and the propeller got badly twisted. Esperando and I mused on how the repair could be done down here so far from proper aircraft parts and mechanics and finally decided that they will probably have disassemble it and truck it back to San Diego.

I always hate unpacking a suitcase more than packing one, maybe that feeling is coupled with the realization that the trip is over, or maybe its all the clothes that need washing and putting away, or maybe its how worn out you feel after traveling—I am exhausted! It is nice to be home and have cats intertwined in my legs all night so I can’t move around in my sleep. No wonder my back is always contorted after several nights in my own bed, however they do make me feel wanted.

While I was at my brother Juan-in-a-Million’s house in Northern California I enjoyed photographing the grapes ripening in his vineyard, getting ready to become upstanding young bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. They look so beautiful in the sunlight. We also watched a covey of half-grown quail gambling about in his front yard, trying to decide whether to take the plunge and race up the street or continue to hide in the bushes. That’s when everyone pointed out that not having cats is a good thing, no way would all those baby quail have survived cats that cannot control their urge to hunt. Crazy people! These same cats are great to have around to discourage roof rats, gophers and nesting flickers that like to eat your roof. As with most all things, there is a good side and a bad side to having cats.

Loreto to Cabo Pulmo

Our vacation is not proceeding smoothly, but rather in fits and starts. When we left Loreto 3 days ago I got the grunge from something I ate at lunch, I thought. In retrospect I believe that one of our houseguests who thought she had bad food had a 24-hour stomach bug and passed it on to me. In any event we stopped in Loreto for lunch at La Mision, a new luxury hotel there and were offered a terrific lunch buffet. I ate far more than I had intended to including lasagna; enchilada suiza; little strips of fajita meat; these delicious ground meat gorditas in a deep fried pastry which you topped with salsa, fresh chopped onions and cilantro; ceviche; and a wide selection of desserts including fruit, flan, buñuelos, various pastries and cakes. After stuffing ourselves we continued our journey, 4 hours south to La Paz.

I was so full from lunch, I began to think I was going to throw up before we would ever get to our destination. I just chalked it up to something bad in the lunch and way too many solid days of driving. By the time we got to our accommodation for the evening, Casa Tuscany, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and go to sleep. Our hosts, a delightful couple, Patricia and Ken Bonner (respectively from Australia and New Zealand) were quite chatty and I hoped I wouldn’t pitch it all in front of them before they showed us to our room 30 minutes later. I had no desire to go to our favorite restaurant, Las Virgenes. Fortunately our hosts had provided a very decent bottle of wine with the room and Esperando wasn’t hungry either. He sipped some wine and read while I cratered. In the morning I still hadn’t recovered, I felt better but now had diarrhea. Fortunately I recovered after a dose of Lomotil.

We ran a bunch of errands in La Paz, including retrieving a dresser drawer that had been repaired from shipping damage; trying to get a scuba tank filled (but without enough time); buying a few groceries at Walmart; and checking to see if a red enamel/stainless steel GE stove was still available at El Ferry (an appliance store) for Casa Abeja. I had seen the stove 5 months previously. At the time it was drastically marked down, I assumed because of its color. Esperando was sure it would be there, I was sure it wouldn’t and my jaw dropped to the floor to still find it, although without any price on it. Turns out someone had bought it, but returned it since one of the burners didn’t work. We told them we would be returning in a week and would buy it if they could get it fixed by then. This is Mexico, we’ll see if anything happens.

After that, we got back on the highway for Cabo Pulmo, which turned out to be 2 ½ hours distant. I had set up a 3-day stay for us at the delightful El Encanto de Cabo Pulmo, a private home comprised of a small main house, separate loft with balcony (where we stayed), and small casita. The house was designed by artist Diane Varney and every detail is beautifully finished and furnished Mexican style. She has planted an interesting garden of desert plants and many native trees which support the abundant bird life of several species of doves, cardinals, orioles, some small olive colored flittery birds and a desert lark. Cabo Pulmo itself is a national marine park, Parque Marino Nacional Cabo Pulmo, noted for great diving. It has the only coral reef system in the Sea of Cortez. Interestingly most of the tourists we’ve encountered here are Italians.

After lunch yesterday, Esperando caught ‘the grunge’ and fell ill. This morning he was feeling not 100%, but in the way of men went off on his dive anyway. Turns out the first two dives were good, but Esperando was too ill to make the last one.

Cabo Pulmo is an unusual place. We think the population must be about 200 with quite a few Mexican families. It has very little in the way of a grocery store, 4 restaurants, 5 dive shops, a host of beautiful gringo homes running on solar cells and well water. Although quite isolated it still manages to generate a cacophony of noise Mexican-style—generators humming, roosters crowing, peacocks mewing, birds chirping, children screaming, metal pans clanging, trucks rattling by, car alarms screeching, cars honking, cars revving by some with radios blaring, dogs barking, horses neighing, hammers tapping, electric saws roaring, and workmen constructing new homes hollering at one another—because of its small size every noise takes on a life of its own and rivets attention during its broadcast.

We have been eating at El Caballero. The meals are simple but tasty and the young waiter makes a truly great Margarita. Tonite we took the steak we had planned to bbq, but lacking the means for doing so they prepared it for us. Medium rare turned out to be pretty much well done, but still it was tasty.

The daytime temperature has been about 95F (although we think it topped 100F today) and since the generator is down we have no air conditioning. Other than living in the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez, taking a shower every couple of hours is the only way to cool down for a few minutes. Fortunately there is a fairly steady breeze after about 10 am (I say that as I sit here dripping prespiration in the shade). Our bedroom has a ceiling fan directly over the bed—and mosquito netting. I have already sacrificed a good portion of my ankles and legs for mosquito nourishment—they must be Aztec mosquitoes as they are quite a bloodthirsty lot. At night all the stars in the heavens and the Milky Way light up the night sky and are visible from our fine balcony location. We started out saying this place is way too remote, we could visit here, but we could never live here, but now we have added Diane Varney’s lovely home to the list of places we would buy to retire to—but just for 4 months every year—and not in hot August.

My Friend Flicka, Not!

Living the expatriate life brings an intrinsic set of rewards for those who want the adventure: learning a new culture and language, seeing new places, eating new cuisine and making new friends. One disadvantage can be maintaining two residences. When you go away to live on a job and leave your house behind, Things can happen that you can't even begin to imagine while you are gone. Three years ago when we were in Australia a serious freeze burst a water pipe in the kitchen. The break wasn’t discovered until several days later by a previous caretaker and the entire ground floor, which was wood, had to be replaced in absentia. Water leaked from the ground floor into the basement and destroyed many of my husband’s tools.

Last week, we drove back to Denver from Santa Rosalia to smog the truck so we could renew the registration. For that, and I am having surgery on my shoulder for a bone spur which has given me bursitis. Spring is getting on here, the nights are cool but the days are warmer, albeit windy. The birds and the bees, but especially the birds, are getting into the act. We have sparrow nests on most roof corners under the Spanish tiles. Regrettably we have a resident Northern Flicker couple who have decided that they must live in our house or die. We had them last year too, but the cat wasn’t living in Mexico then and he would get up on the roof and startle them away. Good cat. I used to really like flickers before I knew them so well. They are handsome, rather shy solitary birds. One time I even rescued a damaged one from under a car where it was spinning about. When I took it to the bird rescue place they said it had probably ingested poison, and destroyed it.

Maybe that is why the flickers are destroying our house, but I think it is because they like the deep eaves and the soft Styrofoam that forms a crown molding under them. They like to peck it out in popcorn size pieces all over the yard and make a nice 4-inch diameter hole that goes in about 5 inches deep. When they discover it is blocked by metal and they can’t get in any further they think—so okay, that hole was a failure, let’s move over a foot a try a new one—hmm, same result! And so they tried again to the tune of 31 holes. We had the animal and pest control specialist out to stop the havoc before we got home and they hung these ugly pink plastic flags all over the stucco to frighten the birds off. It was $100 for the first flagging and then another $38 to move the ladder and put flags at another site. Although a BB gun might sound like a good answer, The Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects Northern flickers. When we arrived back in Denver there was no sign of them. The flickers seemed to have given up. Esperando spent a good two days climbing up and down a 24-foot ladder and hanging out windows from the second story to fill the holes with Great Stuff, an insulating foam sealant that squirts into a hole and expands. The next day he went back to all 31 holes and lopped off the overfill with a machete. Needless to say it makes me quite uncomfortable to watch all this, thinking of falling boys that dash their brains out.

Silly saps that we are, we went away to California for a week to go to a wedding leaving our filled holes behind! But it was a different story when I got home minus Esperando who was attending meetings in Vancouver. The moment I walked in the house they started undoing all Esperando’s work. They are pecking out the Great Stuff. I spend my days racing outside at the first sound of tapping to chase them off. The dog, who drove up with us caught on right away that everytime that certain noise starts we must run up the stairs and race out the balcony door. When the noise starts up and I leap up from my chair, he starts in with that hunting bark "ow, ow, ow" and throws all the carpets askew on the wooden floors in his eagerness to get up the stairs first. When I finally catch up to him and open the balcony door, we charge out onto the deck but no matter how I try to show him its the birds that are bothering me, he just can't get it, but stays right in front of me to trip over. Too bad he's not a bird dog! The flickers squawk and fly away but I can hear them making that noise, what Wikipedia describes as, “a sustained laugh, ki ki ki ki.” I know they are laughing at me.














All this white popcorn crap is spread all over the lawn and patio, blown about hither thither by the spring winds. Here you see some on our doormat.

Feathery friends

One of the natural treasures we have down here, in addition to an abundance of cactus and Mexican food, is hummingbirds. When we first got here we put up hummingbird feeders but no one ever came. (It is sort of like having a garden party but no guests arrive.) We have tons of hibiscus bushes in the yard which drew the hummingbirds like magnets so we would see them everyday, but not at our feeders.

The first hummingbirds that we saw daily during the hot season, Xanthus hummingbirds, did not seem remarkable to look at since they were not boldly colored and didn’t seem to be very personable. They are a native non-migratory species. Oh well, we said, maybe when the migrating hummingbirds come from up north we will have knowledgeable birds who understand these things. Maybe they will show these Xanthus dudes what it’s all about. One day I was standing next to a feeder when a Rubythroat showed up—we like to think it was the first one in town. The bird actually did a double take, like wait a minute I’ve been here every year and there was NEVER a feeder here, HOW amazing!! It zoomed right up to the feeder and looked at it, then moved back a foot and looked at it, then it zoomed back and started feeding. And that was the beginning of the famous Santa Rosalia turf wars.

More hummingbirds showed up and started contesting ownership of our two feeders which are about 15 feet apart. They would spiral up 50 feet in the air using their beaks against each other like Jeddi swords. This went on for a while, then one day a swarm of bees and a beautiful Streak-backed Oriole showed up to partake. The hummingbirds were overwhelmed by the bees as each feeder would have a mass of about 50 bees on it who could effectively keep them away. The bees would suck the feeder dry in one day. The oriole would sit on the feeder and parry bees off with its beak for about a minute, before it would also be driven off. But it was persistent and would come back right away.

Our most recent hummingbird guest is Costa’s hummingbird, and a beauty it is too. A tiny little guy with bright purple bib and brilliant green elsewhere. It turns out Costa’s hummingbird is limited to the Baja peninsula and a small area around Guaymas on the mainland. In the last few days the bees have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, so we are back to two hummingbird sentinels guarding each feeder and driving enemy combatants away.

Dias Patrias

Tropical Storm Lowell never quite got up here to Santa Rosalia which is just as well by me. The day before all the giant-squid fishermen hauled their boats up on the parking lot by the port. We have been told that for $20 you can go out on a squid boat and watch them haul their catch in, then when you get tired of it for another $20 they will bring you back to shore. The squid fishing all takes place at night, and all these squid guys have a big light hanging out in front of the boat to lure the squid up from the depths. Most nights their boat lights out on the water look like a small town, so many of them are fishing close together.

We are getting ready in Santa Rosalia for the national holiday, 16 de Septiembre, the foremost Mexican independence holiday. Cinco de May is independence from the French, but 16 de Septiembre is independence from Spain and is really the real biggie. In any event it is very hard to park downtown these days as everyone in town is selling jewelry, flags, and whatnot. Kids are in the big barnlike structure that houses some historic photos and are practicing folkloric dancing for the big parade on Tuesday. We have Monday and Tuesday off. Esperando bought a big Mexican flag to hang in front of the house. Monday is a full moon so any partying and I can tell you there will be a lot from the looks of the plaza and the banners in the streets, will have that as its influence! Esperando and I plan to watch the parade.

Yesterday we had the kitchen fumigated to keep the ants at bay. It was pretty gross with chemical smells and I got a sore throat from it. We had to empty everything out of the kitchen and then of course the cook wanted to go home as there was nothing for her to do, and I had to tell her no. The pets don’t seem to have been adversely affected, and my sore throat is gone today. I also had them spray the patio for ants, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have had any affect on the flies.

We brought some hummingbird feeders down which haven’t had much action until last night. We apparently have an indigenous hummingbird that doesn’t know anything about feeders. We haven’t seen them for a couple of days so they must have started south. However last night a larger hummingbird showed up and drank a couple of times from the feeder and was quite calm about our presence. Maybe we will have a big hummingbird winter with migrants from the north!!

Bird Lessons

One of the things Esperando and I have always enjoyed in a sort of amateurish way is identifying the birds in the various countries where we have lived. We had a bit of discussion about spending $175 (choke) on a book exclusive to the birds of Baja (costly because it is out of print). At the urging of another bird focused colleague, we decided to bite the bullet and go for it. The book arrived a few days ago and never have I felt more cheated--lots of descriptions but not a single photo or drawing to identify anything.

I have been reviewing some of the bird photos we took on our last trip, and I keep coming to the picture of this big black guy who is famous in cartoons and images of the bleak Mexican desert. He has nothing to recommend him. He smells bad since he is fond of eating roadkill and other dead meat. But, he looks so great perched on the top of a cactus that it almost takes your breath away, especially when that image is something that is so typical of Mexico, yet when you see it you can't believe its real.

We know him in the US as the Turkey Vulture or buzzard, but in Mexico he is called a zopilote or buitre. He ranges from southern Canada to the southernmost tip of South America. With a wingspan of 68–72 inches, the buzzard has dark brown to black plumage; a featherless, purplish-red head and neck; and a short, hooked, ivory-colored beak. It finds its meals using its sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gases produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. Lacking a syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—its only vocalizations are grunts or low hisses. In the US the vulture receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

Now watch out for the hissing! Don't you feel smarter?