Well, all this talk of bird banding/ringing has made me dig through my photo albums. I've posted a few highlights of my bird banding over the years:






Mountain Chickadee
Idaho Bird Observatory







Immature female Northern Goshawk
Entiat, Washington












Immature male Merlin Idaho Bird Observatory












Barred Woodcreeper
La Selva, Costa Rica










Female Long-eared Owl
Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge
Montana











Pair of Long-eared Owls
Ninepipes NWR
Montana











Common Paraque La Selva, Costa Rica





Male White-collared Manakin
La Selva, Costa Rica
(they are incredibly strong for their size,
the males especially because they dance ALL day)

Slaty Spinetail, Costa Rica

Yellow Warbler, Oregon

Green-crowned Brilliant, Costa Rica

Bicolored Antbird, Costa Rica

CBC and trying to figure out life

Today Bird Boy and I did a CBC in West Seattle. It was drizzly and windy i.e. not so great for bird watching but we still saw some nice birds (wait, there is no such thing as a non-nice bird. I digress) including Fox Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Downy Woodpecker (male), Killdeer, Spotted Towhee, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets and lots of CROWS. I could watch crows all day.

The snow is slowly melting and I was able to drive today. Now I must figure out finding a job for the spring, putting my birds up for the molt (not till March), getting a new computer, grad school and other wonderful things along those lines. Sometimes it's so much to think about that I ignore all of it. This morning I thought about all of it for a moment but decided that watching the golden and yellow striped bamboo blowing in the wind had much more to offer.

snow, Snow and SNOW

I measured 17" of snow this morning in the front of our house. Tried to chase bunnies in this stuff a few days ago. Had some flushes but none in the bag. Now it has snowed so much that it is pretty much impossible to get the rabbits moving. The birds are restless, which makes me restless. But at least the snow is nice to look at and fun to play in. I still wish I was back in Texas. I saw a merlin in the neighborhood yesterday and today there was a Hermit Thrush and Red-breasted Sapsucker. More snow in the forecast for tonight. Oh, joy.

Rainy days

The birds and I made it back to Washington after a whirl-wind three weeks on the road. We had an awesome time, saw some amazing sights and best of all, caught a lot of game. One of my main reasons for traveling so far was to get more game under my birds and it paid off! Cricket caught four cottontails (and got a lot of good experiences) and Chase caught eight cottontails and a (@*%&@$*@#( JACKRABBIT! His first ever and he had it under control to boot. I met some great people and birds (and dogs!) and look forward to next year.
Now that I'm back in Washington it's hard to get excited about hunting the thick and thorny cover here, especially without anyone else to help! There were always a few people along to help beat brush at NAFA but now it's mostly solo hawking again. I wouldn't mind solo hawking (I'd prefer it in most cases) but with the rabbits so hard to get moving it's pretty frustrating.
We'll see what the next couple months of hawking bring. It's supposed to snow this weekend and I love hawking in the snow.

Ah, the Wild West

We made it to Colorado Wednesday night after a fairly straight through drive. Except for the insane blowing snow on a pass in Wyoming. Met some really interesting (but nice) people in Ogden, Utah. Including an old lady who wanted to drink beer with us....? Some interesting species seen:
Ferruginous Hawk
Northern Harrier
Pinyon Jays
Rough-legged Hawk
Prairie Falcon
American Kestrel
Red-tailed Hawk (two Harlan's)
Golden Eagle
Pronghorn
Coyote
We are staying here in Boulder with our friends Pat and John (my dad went to high school with John). They have a German Shepherd, a cat and llamas. It's been very windy but today we went on a long bike ride through Boulder Open Space (wow, they use their natural areas way better than Seattle/WA State) and saw a very dark RT with a snake, prairie dogs, kestrels and some gadwalls. We're going to look for birds tomorrow. I hear there are ptarmigan and boreal owls in the mountains around Boulder but I doubt we'll make it up there. More later!

I never thought I'd have a blog but here we are. I just put some photos of the team up. I'm about to leave for a three week trip to Colorado and Texas so I probably won't have time to update for a while. Stay tuned for what promises to be many interesting and insane adventures.