A strange scary land...

This America place, its weird. The scenery is beautiful, my current post is located in a valley and mountains rise up all around it. Most aren't very tall, but there are enough of them with snow that usually rise past the clouds to really feel like mountains rather than just big hills. But the town itself, Medford, is dang ugly. All the businesses are slightly decrepit but they all have massive signs, so the road becomes an ugly tube of concrete and signs in all directions. Luckily down the road is Ashland, a hippy haven that has built itself on a large Shakespeare festival that they put on every year, and the town is built on rolling hills with all the buildings looking somewhat respectable, looking down at the rabble that is Medford. But no matter where you go, its trucks trucks trucks, huge trucks, small trucks, noisy trucks, noisier trucks, they are everywhere. Its a strange place that seems to only live in extremes.

As for the bird banding, I really still haven't started. A few days ago I actually banded my first bird (not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be). But you see, it then escaped from my hand as I was shifting it around to get a measurement. This seems to be a common thread with birds and I, I try to move them, and then they fly off. In fact, today while trying to get a sparrow out of the net (getting anything out of the net is tough for me at this point - no idea how rough or soft to be without breaking their wing off - which hasn't happened yet, thankfully) I went in, grabbed it, had a strange grip and its foot was between my fingers, so I tried to move my hand a bit to get the foot out, and off it went. There are a few that haven't escaped though, this is a bird I liked to call a "Robin", commonly found in small cloth bags hanging from ropes above my head. You have to make a really dorky face to subdue them otherwise they will spit acid.



Apparently yesterday someone came up to the cabin to join the crew for a while (not sure how long, but I am guessing until November). She's from California and thats where my knowledge ends, but on the same day our dear friend Carl left us, to head back home and eventually up to Mount Saint Helens where he will be monitoring volcanic activity to save the world and at night he will be spending it dancing the night away (he's actually doing bird surveys I think). He will always be remembered.



(Just so everyone knows, that costume Carl is wearing, it wasn't chosen to be funny, that was what he took normally to go canoeing, just had to put it into context).