Incidental

Red eyed vireo in the nets


Common nighthawk again. Very creepy.

First big boy

I figured out how to put up better videos, yay! Here's a video and a picture of our first Goshawk. This was a male, so it was fairly small, but still the biggest (and loudest) bird thus far.

Compare

Some pretty boring days. The weather is beautiful, but without westerly winds birds are scarce.





Check out the size difference between sexes. Male on right, female on left.

Caught these two in the nets this morning:

Green darner:


Black-and-white Warbler:

Wind

The wind has been great the last two days so we have been seeing a lot of birds and catching a few. The wind also makes it easier for the birds to bounce out of the nets, so we've had a bunch of close calls. Today we caught our first two merlins of the year and I got mine using the bownets which was a first for me. Threw the dove for attention, threw the starling to bring it in, it pounced on the sparrow and I dragged it in at sprang the net.






Each night we've also been attempting to catch nighthawks, for fun. Well, we finally got one last night. They are the strangest birds I've ever seen, hissing at you with their fleshy mouths like the demonic goatsuckers they are.





Fud

Insanely bored

We thought it would be a good day considering the weather, but nothing's flying, so I left for a bit.

Pick up

Today was our busiest day so far, with a total of 7 sharp shinned. We got our first male too.

Heavy fog this morning

Downy caught by accident:

First Hawk

Yesterday we caught our first hawk. It was an immature female sharp shinned. We didn't actually have much to do with the catching of it, as it flew into the net and may have been there for 10 minutes before we even noticed.

Stuff them in cans for storage:


Hold them like ice cream cones:

Second rain day

Another day of rain here. Yesterday was our first full day at work. I woke up at 6:30, boiled water for coffee, listened to NPR while looking out of the blind until 11:30 which is when we listen to "Chapter of the day" on WPR, which is currently Bob Dylan's autobiography, I took a break for a run on the trails around the ridge, took a "shower" with a solar shower (cold), sat in the blind until three while listening to NPR, drank a beer, looked out the blind until 6 while listening to NPR, listened to twins game, at 7:30 its dark enough to take away some of the bait birds, but leave out the dove because for some reason nighthawks are intrigued by them, tried to catch nighthawks until 8, shut all the nets down, listened to music in the blind with everyone until 9:30 while reading, went to bed. We saw fewer than 10 hawks, and had one sharp shinned bounce out of our net (which I missed during my half hour absence while running). While it sounds terribly boring (and was), it only gets better from here as the birds start to migrate. We will be catching hundreds of birds, but it takes a bit of waiting.

If anyone is interested in visiting they are more than welcome. The best time to come up and see lots of birds would be the first week or so of October. During that time we'll be getting a variety of hawks during the day (in good numbers) and lots of saw whet owls at night:

The exterior of our sleeping shack:

First couple days

Alright, so, in Duluth. We've had a couple of days of set up and are ready to trap some hawks. The only problem is that the hawks don't really start flying for a couple of weeks...and it's raining. So the next couple of weeks we will be having some long boring days of looking into the empty sky, perhaps catching a few birds, but mostly just waiting for september to some. I'll try to put up pictures as they come, but internet is scarce and there won't be much action for awhile.

Here are a couple of pictures of where we're working/living.

This is the back end of the banding blind, with our food stacked up on the shelves


Inside the blind:


I sleep on the left bottom!


My bossman. Chain smokin,' coke and beer drinkin,' no eatin,' hawk wranglin' dude, with an injured merlin brought by:

To Duluth

Going up to Duluth tomorrow, we'll see what the situation'll be for a few months.

A couple pictures from Mexico:

MPLSTPAUL

Megan jumping off of the bridge between Lake of the Isles and Lake Harriet. Police broke this fun up.


At hidden beach:

Madeit

Made it to MN 30 hours after leaving.

Last day of work

Final trip milage:

Taking off

Tomorrow is my last day of work here in Nevada. It's been a great season. I've enjoyed the work, my housemates and coworkers have been more than I could have asked for, and I've gotten to see a bit of the Southwest. I am ready to leave this heat, but know I'll have to return to explore the many places I wasn't able to visit.

Off to MN.

We had a party a couple of nights ago with the rest of the WIFL crew at their POOL! Good times...

At each beetle monitoring station we have set up large, bright yellow sticky traps which we replace every two weeks. We usually catch a few hundred flies, but today we found that something a little bigger managed to run into it, and kill itself...a yellow breasted chat. This was only yesterday I think.

Veg. surveys, so fun

Desert tortoise

Fisheye

As a way of monitoring the tamarisk beetles at one of our sites we use a special hemispherical camera lens to take photos of the foliage. With these photos they are able to evaluate changes in foliation. Here are some normal pictures with this lens:

TVs

Kingfisher? no idea...

Sunset at our campsite in Dixie