Day 25: Sutter Street and the Middle School

      Another scorcher. If I ever do another big year, which I will, I will definitely start the year in a different season. After living in Humboldt for seven years I find this heat unbearable.
    Locke and I started out extra early today (8:00) after his breakfast to check out the impound dam near Sutter Street and the Middle School. The impound damn was built in the early 1900's in order for the Argonaut mine to store they mine tailings. Before this the mines were allowing the sediments they drudged up from below the earth to run down the various streams that feed the central valley. Naturally, farmers in the valley became upset when the streams that irrigated their crops became clogged with the tailings, hence the impound damn. These days the  western end of the dam is clogged with toxic soil (a process using cyanide was used to leach the remaining gold ore out of the tailings was developed in the earlier part of the last century) and the eastern end, at the head of the damn is marsh land. Unfortunately we couldn't manage to get close enough of to the marsh to see any new birds, but we did see a very upset Red-tailed Hawk and some very angry Red-winged Blackbirds. At the middle school we were visited by some Common Ravens, but the main reason we went to the school was to try to get a bird's eye view of the marsh, which it turns out, you can't get from the school.
   All is not lost though, during the walk I noticed a spur off one of the cul-de-sacs that seemed to overlook the marsh and a largish pond too. So perhaps tomorrow we'll attempt to check that out.