Our 2019 Adventures

Masked Bobwhite Quail As mentioned in previous blogs, one of the missions of the Buenos Aires NWR, is to reintroduce this endangered bird. One of our many jobs here is to care for this bird once a week.  There are other volunteers that are the primary care givers.  They perform many tasks daily in providing care to the “pens”; where they grow before being released into the wild.  Others also fill in like us, making sure the quail have food and water daily. There is a display pen near the visitor center where several quails are kept for public viewing.  The flight pen is for staff only access and is about a mile away from the visitor center.  The birds here are banded and reintroduced to their natural habitat before being released into the wild. Locked and electrified fence to discourage predators, providing access to the flight pens. Immediately upon entry into this fenced in area, one must step into a Vircon bath to disinfect our shoes.   There is one mor

“The Sonoran Outpost” Just a few pictures to show you the neighborhood in which we live.   Yes, it’s a compound, surrounded by a chain link fence, topped with razor wire.   An electric gate allows access for us.     We call it, home!   You can see our truck, marking our site. Baboquivari Mountains Home! In addition to the volunteer RVs, there are several mobile trailers here.  One of them is called the Community Center.  We use it for our twice monthly Volunteer Potluck dinners, and it contains the laundry room as well. The other trailers are temporary housing, for staff biologists and wildlife specialists.    

A Typical Workday Hello and Happy New Year Everyone As we enjoy our days off, we don’t have to return until Sunday.   While sitting around and trying to recoup our strengths, we thought of showing you what a typical refuge road looks like. As you can imagine, a refuge this large has dozens of roads used for many purposes.   There are roads used for basic / primitive camp sites throughout the refuge as well as many roads used by hunters.   These roads if not maintained, nature will eventually reclaim the space.   One of our many jobs here is to maintain some of these roads and keep them open for safe vehicle passage.   This includes trimming branches. As can be seen below, some of these have varying degrees of openness or thick growth.  In addition, the views from these roads also vary: Since we are in Southern Arizona, just about everything here will either prick, stick or sting you.  Every bush, tree or shrub has needles.  It is just a question of how lon