Bluebird Banding on Monday night (20130610)

I had the opportunity to follow a Mountain Bluebird Trail Monitor as he was doing a box census on Monday night. There were eight of us in all on an evening that threatened rain all evening. Mom kept an eye on us as we went to work.

It was great to watch the experienced hands of Don Stiles as delicately takes a youngster out of the nest.

I was surprised to see how well their wing feathers were developing for such young birds.

While their wings are doing great, the rest of their bodies have a long way to go to be fully feathered.

Here she is all banded so that she can provide data for the network in the future.

As is sometimes the case, we also found an egg that had probably not been fertilized. These birds are 12-18 days old and the egg will not hatch.

It was an interesting and informative evening. We did get rained on at the end of the evening, but not before we saw Goldfinches, Elk, Swainson Hawks, Flickers and many other birds along with a coyote. A short post for a short evening. Looking forward to the weekend and more Grizzly opportunities.
Turbo