In-hand

So far this season I have taken very few in-hand bird photos, but here are a few, most of which are off of my iPhone, so not great, good birds though.  Now that the intensive training period has passed I think I'll be taking and posting more photos, both in-hand and in the wild.

We caught five Cedar Waxwings this week at one of our offsites, my first ever in-hand.  There was a flock of over a hundred in the area, but only a few seemed low enough to make it into our nets, a few others even bounced out.


I'm not sure what's going on with the lighting in this photo, but look at the WAX! Amazing.


We've caught more swallows this season than I ever have before, all of which were Tree Swallows, except for this one female Violet-green.


Tree Swallow looking minuscule next to these hands.


Swamp Sparrows are around, but not too common, so catching two new ones this season has been a nice surprise.


A messy looking Yellow-rumped Warbler.

Burney

Right now I'm a few hours north (in Burney) of my usually work sites, helping out the northern crew with some of their work. Still point counting, but no nest searching, and we do playback calls for a few indicator species. Camping in National Forests is still the best.

View from atop the toughest site I've done, which runs parallel to the PCT.


Brent and with Fish.


Banded Yellow-rumped male


Shadowy Tree Swallow at Willow Lake

In the eye

Shipping off to Virginia early in the morning. Fun visit to Mass with friends, family, food, early arrivals, settlers, online streaming, all things non-CR.

A few shots from a walk around the Quabbin Reservoir.

Hooded Merganser


Tree Swallows, my new nemesis. Not because they're hard to find, but because I got a shit right in the eye from one.


Ruffed Grouse

Hot at pine gulch

Par day at Pine Gulch, walked around with my camera a lot.

House finch


Me with a downy woodpecker


Tree swallow


Our faithful marsh wren, always singing from the same patch.


Juvenile black phoebe


Savannah sparrow

Best day so far

Today Amanda and I had a really great day banding at Redwood Creek. We caught a total of 41 birds, with 16 species. The highlights were 2 barn swallows, a tree swallow, a black-headed grosbeak, a warbling vireo, and mix of juvenile birds! We also ran into a female common merganser with 4 chicks, shortly before peeking into the hummingbird nest I found the week before, which now has two cute little raisin-like nestlings in it.

Female black-headed grosbeak


Steller's Jay


Barn swallow #1



Barn swallow #1, female


Barn swallow #2, male



Barn swallow #2, awesome tail, and with a couple of retained primaries in there


Barn swallow secondaries, very cool heart shape, which you don't see in other birds


Male California quail






All three of us, wearing hats


Tree swallow




Hummingbird raisins

Tree Swallow

Great picture my mom took of my dad taking...


...this great picture of a swallow: