I had hoped to get in some quality time for photography (or is it time for quality photography?) but it was not to be this week. Yesterday I had to go to the big city to get more of that special dietary dog food for you know who and that pretty much killed the day. One cool thing was I stopped by the Duck Creek Visitor Center (Dixie National Forest) to chat up some folks over there who I'd learned were big birders. Charlie and Linda are volunteers there (and had been at Bryce previously), he took me back to their RV and I got to see their feeder setup - along with a female Evening Grosbeak - a life bird for me. I so wish the park would allow us to put up feeders; they also had oodles of hummers coming around. I also saw a big ol' Yellow-bellied Marmot sunning on a rock right next to where the RV's were parked. Yes, I will be going back.

Plans for today changed when the fan motor for the heater in my trailer arrived yesterday. I had to cast aside any plans for going to Inspiration Point to shoot the sunrise since laundry chores would need to happen in the a.m so that I could devote the afternoon to working on the heater (this morning's low was 44 - the 30's won't be far away). Midday found me taking you-know-who over to Tropic Reservoir for her swim before I settled in with screwdrivers, wire cutters, and other assorted tools. I picked the right time to go because shortly after we arrived - in fact, while Roxy was just coming back with the ball the first time - I saw the first Peregrine Falcon. That's right, I said "first". There would three in all in a span of about 15 minutes - two of them making mock attacks on each other with short dives and some very impressive aerial maneuvers. I'm still shaking my head over a 3'fer of PEFA's.

And I did get the heater working - even with the fact that this trailer was designed and engineered by complete morons*.

*(The heater manufacturer designed the heater a bit weird, I think, but it still would have been relatively easy to service had the trailer manufacturer spent an extra 2 or 3 freakin' $ on a plug so I wouldn't have had to cut the electrical connections and put that all back together again. Maybe that also gives them a way to hose people later on with high labor charges as well as pinch a few pennies in the manufacturing process. Twits.)