Bird Houses??????

You might have noticed that all of the sudden we have bird houses in the native area between 11 and 16.  This is not an attempt to attract birds although they are real bird houses and I suppose we might get birds taking up residence.  In fact these bird houses are simply markers.  The native areas on the course were once maintained areas and therefore have irrigation installed in them.  The bird houses mark where we have isolation valves and sprinkler heads.  The next two pictures show a valve box, and one that is open showing the isolation valve.

No matter how often we try and locate, and trim around these boxes, we always have trouble finding them in the long grass.  With the bird houses, it will be easy to quickly locate a valve which is really handy when a sprinkler head needs repair.  This next picture shows a bird house near the 18th tee.

This is not a real birdhouse.  It is actually a sprinkler head on a riser that is disguised as a birdhouse.  This was designed so the water stream would get over the surrounding shrubs which are getting taller and taller.  The post for the birdhouse is actually the pipe feeding the sprinkler head.  As the shrubs get taller, it's quite simple to just change out the pipe to a longer one if more height is needed.

FYI, as you can see in the next photo, the native area between 11 and 16 is looking a little shabby lately and that is because we are still repairing the areas where we recently removed trees.  That pile of dirt is to backfill the holes made where tree stumps were removed.  We will get this cleaned up as soon as we can.  Right now we're still trying to get all the leaves picked up off the course.