Bird Nests
Clockwise from top left: Yellow-breasted Chat, Brown Thrasher, Bell's Vireo, Dickcissel, Gray Catbird, Red-winged Blackbird
My last photo group outing was something a little different- we shadowed a biologist as she visited nests in Illinois' Pyramid State Park where she is monitoring them. She has located more than 60 nests, and we visited perhaps a dozen. Some had been depredated and the eggs were gone, but she also found some new ones and additional eggs in previously-located nests. It was a cool experience, and helped me to appeciate how resilient birds have to be: the eggs and chicks were removed and documented (note marks on some eggs) and then returned and re-hidden. We carefully returned the vegetation to its original position and made sure to leave in a different direction than that from which we came in the hope that predators would not track our scent back to the sites.
Photos mostly via iPhone
Bird Nests
Clockwise from top left: Yellow-breasted Chat, Brown Thrasher, Bell's Vireo, Dickcissel, Gray Catbird, Red-winged Blackbird
My last photo group outing was something a little different- we shadowed a biologist as she visited nests in Illinois' Pyramid State Park where she is monitoring them. She has located more than 60 nests, and we visited perhaps a dozen. Some had been depredated and the eggs were gone, but she also found some new ones and additional eggs in previously-located nests. It was a cool experience, and helped me to appeciate how resilient birds have to be: the eggs and chicks were removed and documented (note marks on some eggs) and then returned and re-hidden. We carefully returned the vegetation to its original position and made sure to leave in a different direction than that from which we came in the hope that predators would not track our scent back to the sites.
Photos mostly via iPhone