Full swing

Sleeping past 4 feels pretty good. I started point counting and nest searching on my own this week, which was mostly a success, but I only ended up with one nest, though it was the first Black-backed of the season:




Tomorrow, and a couple of days next week Amanda and I are going to help out the north crew with banding and demonstrations for a group of sixth graders. It should be interesting to see the banding site, which is right around this lake (Willow Lake):



And hopefully catch some of these:

Macgillivray's Warbler


Cassin's Finch


Mountain Chickadee




Here's a quick look at our living situation before we fully moved in.


Our room. We now have raised cots, we're moving up in life!




Also, welcome to my office, burned Sierra landscape!

Parents weekend

This past weekend my parents came out for a visit and got a chance to see some of what I've been doing. Though the days were really (very) slow with hawks, they got to see a few shins come in and at least get a good idea of how exactly things function at the station. The nights were a different story however, with two of our biggest nights at 85 and 69 saw whets and it got kind of crazy.

Despite the lack of hawks and a bit of rain, my dad came out of the trip with an awesome set of pictures which I will gradually be putting up pictures from.


Photo by my pa


Photo by my pa

The day before they came we actually had a great hawk day, with 4 goshawks and a redtail. RT on left, G on right:




Gos scream a lot


American pipit's long back talon


My parents did get some stellar rainbows


Black backed woodpecker


Saw whet with a white talon