Mountain City Montage
by PAULINE TOM
Well, no report on level of our well water above the pump. Mountain City Oaks Water System now checks just once a month on the 25th.
The springs are running slow enough and the water has dropped low enough that the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District declared Stage 3 Drought to protect groundwater supplies by slowing water level declines.
This is the driest one-year on record and the Climate Prediction Center issued a La Niña advisory on September 8, predicting a drier-than-normal winter.
Some friends in Plum Creek are shocked to learn that no water will flow from faucets of neighbors nearby (for instance, Mountain City and ranches) if wells go dry. One said, “How can that be? That’s Third World!”
Mary Stone, district board president of BSEAD, commented in a news release, “Groundwater is a shared resource. Regardless of where you get your water – whether you use your own well, a neighborhood water system, or a city system with multiple water sources – reducing water use is essential. We’ve got to be water wise as a community. We are all in this together.”
Dear readers outside of Mountain City with city systems with multiple water sources: Please conserve water. Please don’t turn on your water outside at night when no one will see. Please don’t let your faucet run while you load the dishwasher. Please turn off water while you brush teeth. Please.
We’re not running out of water in the next few weeks; but, we know not when rains will come. At a recent dinner at Inn Above Onion Creek, RonTom and I sat with an arborist who mentioned tree rings from 500-year-old trees in Texas reveal periods of drought as long as 50 years.
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Oriole reports popped in from all over Mountain City the past few weeks.
Cindy Rector on Juniper tidbitted, “What fun it is to watch different species of migrating birds visit the feeders and water sources in my yard! I saw an oriole sipping nectar from my hummingbird feeder.”
Melissa Garraway on Maple showed photos she took of orioles at her birdbath. She has seen several at a time.
Laura Craig on Cedar and Betty Puckett on Live Oak Drive have seen them, too.
If you’ve not seen them, maybe you’ve heard them. A beautiful melodious whistle.
When Audubon painted the birds in 1825, he called the species we’re seeing “Baltimore Oriole.” There came a time in the mid-1900s when scientists lumped it and the oriole called “Bullock’s Oriole” with the name “Northern Oriole” because the two hybridized in areas where their ranges overlapped. But, after decades, they found along with hybrids the two distinct species.
So, they made a split decision and recognized “Bullock’s” and “Baltimore”, once again.
In the meantime, mitochondrial DNA tests show that the two orioles are not even closely related.
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Fire and Ice is coming soon! Saturday, Oct. 1. Contact Amy Hilton if you have questions at (512) 517-4222.
Contact me if you have a tidbit: [email protected] or (512) 517.5678 (iPhone.) Our home answering machine is on the blink.
