And the work begins...

Today, we went out and checked on several burrows. It was exciting seeing the owls for the first time. Also to see their eggs, for the ones that are nesting. In one burrow, we counted 10 eggs. WOW! Anyways, my boss, his name is David Johnson. He is the Director of the Global Owl Project. He captured with his hands 3 of the owls at different burrows. He let me hold one, and put it back down in it's burrow. That was AWESOME! They are only barely bigger than the Northern Saw-Whet owls I banded in Wisconsin, so it wasn't intimidating trying to hold it properly. After that, he showed my around the town that the Army Depot we are living on is adjacent to, went grocery shopping...cause a girl's gotta eat, and then made banding kits. Then, we went back out and checked on more burrows. Oh, and just a fun side note....we have a family of Great Horned Owls living in our backyard...wanna see?

 You can only see one in this pic.

But, if you look closely, you can see 2 in this one.

They were 3 after I stopped taking pictures. They are huge owls! Two of them are juveniles, which means they are still going to get bigger. It's neat here so far. I gotta day though, the temps need to go back down. It was 84 today! And it is hot! They don't really have humidity here, so its really dry. I think the temps end up going back down later this week. Oh and one more thing, I'm staying on a military base that is soon to be closed (more on this base in a later post---it's got some neat history). So, they play Revelry in the morning at 730 a.m., some other song at 5:00 p.m., and Taps at 10:00 p.m. It's sooooo loud! Looks like I won't need an alarm while I am here.