Fire Training

Today the Fire Dept. and airport guys went out for training. They put out a fire in a simulated crashed airplane (a bunch of palates laid out like an airplane). They put it out so quickly that I didn't get any good pictures of the flames. So Greg and I watched that between spraying sessions today.

The mowing was slow today because we were in an area with a little duckling that hides in the verbesina there. The mother has a radio transmitter so Jimmy came out and made sure we were no where near those ducks. Greg and Jimmy walked in front of the tractor and poked in the weeds to make sure there were no other ducks there (there weren't). I got a few more pictures today since it was sunny.

Here are the airport people putting out the fire in the palates.

We're getting a lot of nesting area cleared. That building in the distance is the communication building that you saw last week, and the area on the left is where some ducklings like to hide so there's still verbesina there.

This is a Wedge-Tailed Shearwater chick in it's burrow. This is one reason it's really hard to mow (and spray). The petrels dig even more holes than the shearwaters. In sandy areas there are usually burrows every couple of feet.

This is an adult Wedgie.

That one had a little nicer burrow. This is an old underground storage bunker by the runway. There were about 8 wedgie chicks in there last time I checked.