Ahoy, Condor!: sunrise

I was back in the blind before sunrise this morning. And what a crazy sunrise it was.

Apocalypse-esque

At one point, I made the mistake of shining my flashlight into the dark corners of the blind :

The ravens were in rare form this morning :

Raven at the window

"HEY!"

This is such an amazing face :

This series of photos is my favorite :

"Oh, you think you're SO tall ..."

"We'll just see about that."

"I'm king of the world!"

Finally after hours of waiting, just as I was about to pack up to leave the blind and head home empty-handed (so to speak), 483, one of the birds I was supposed to trap, showed up.

So I sat back down, and resumed waiting. Waiting for the just right conditions. Waiting for the ravens to magically disappear, waiting for her condor companions to finish feeding. Then in a flash, there was one: 483 all alo -- no wait, 509 was hovering in the doorway, just beneath the trap door. "Come on, 509" I thought as loudly as I could. "You want to leave. You don't want to be in the trap. There's a perfectly good cow leg just outside." 509 made a move to enter further into the double-door trap, and I willed harder. Then she did an about-face and raced out the doorway. I leapt into action, pulled the trap door rope, and the door fell down. I nearly fist-pumped and did a happy dance before remembering to open the internal door that led to the flight pen. 483 flew on through. The song "I've Got You Babe" started playing in my head.

Once I had left the flight pen, I drove down to meet Bob the tricolored blackbird biologist down at his trap site, where he let me assist in banding some birds. He also showed me this trick, where if you hold a female blackbird on her back, then slowly let go, she won't fly away. She'll just stay completely still, legs sticking up in the air, until you turn her over again.