Finished 10/3/26
I'm so tired but this weekend have been so fun!
There was a benefits house show run by a club at my college Friday, 10 bucks at the door for a 3 band set 8:30-11:30 PM, and what a good deal! The locals bands were all very cool. I usually dance but don't go into the mosh pit because most other concerts I've gone to had bigger and older crowds and I didn't want to eat shit and get a concussion (I am 5'3 under 125 lbs), but there was only like 30 people moshing sooooo, I absolutely tweaked out in the front middle and shoved/got shoved around in the pit, and it was so fun! I didn't eat shit either!! The show was close enough to my apartment that I just walked home but stone-cold sober I was basically stumbling home with how dizzy and light-headed I was, in a really good way! I don't have any photos, I was too busy yapping and losing my mind.
Getting loose also made me a bit more socialable than usual, and I had fun talking with some cool folks inbetween sets. Blowing dirt out my nose the whole rest of the night and tracking dust into the apartment, but there's truly nothing better than tweaking out to live music surrounded by other people also tweaking out, fuck yeahhhhhh. Go to local shows people! They're cheap (sometimes free!) and supporting your local bands is cool. The first band that played joined us in the pit when the other sets started, it was awesome. And don't be shy to dance weird in the front, no one cares and on the off chance they do, they're losers!!! Who the hell goes to a house show and then just stands there???
And then, even though it greatly pained me, I woke up at 5 AM (didn't fall asleep until like 1 AM) to go bird banding because the birds wait for no one. We've had a cold front here, and hoped it would drive some more migratory birds here, but even though Audubon's migration tracker showed migration ramping up, there were nothing special in our area?? Birders went out and saw nothing, we didn't get any unusual birds at the station, fucked up! Regardless, it was nice to not have to stand in the sweltering heat and sun for the 6 hours we're out there so some benefits. Since we didn't get too many birds I didn't do toooooo much but here's a gorgeous prothonotary warbler!!
! All birds were handled with the appropriate permits! Do not handle or catch bird's without a permit or the supervision of someone with a permit/sub-permit, it is both illegal and dangerous to the health of the bird !
Sooo pretty! These guys sometimes nest in cypress knees you know? Such a cool bird...
I didn't work with this guy, I banded a lovely little juvenile redwing blackbird, who I also extracted and was very nice and polite, and then I started extracting a absolute evil, pissed off juvenile northern cardinal... we actually had to call our masterbander over because even though he looked fine at first, he was actually double bagged (which is harder to remove) and he was so so mad. Like I couldn't grab and move the net around his wings or head at all because as soon as I was in biting radius, it would go for it 100% of the time and northern cardinals HURT. They're notorious. We joke that they put the cardinal on page 666 of the bird identification book (which we use to sex and age birds) because of this. They bite way harder than what you'd expect from their size and they're so good at pinching your skin or grabbing the cuticle of your nails. Point is my hand hurt way after I got home. Other than that I just hung out with the banding boys (gender-neutral...actually most were women...).
AND THEN, because apparently we all hate sleeping, we did banding AGAIN on Sunday. At a different station. We just like alternate between the two for different sessions but it's all the same folks. Compared to the day before, this day was POPPING (relatively speaking!). We got 3 different species of thrush (veery, gray-checked thrush, swainson's thrush), which is exciting, and I got to process more birds!! Yipee! Let's looky here:
Here's a cute little white-eyed vireo I got to process! I love their calls, they're silly and they sneeze at the end. Also, this individual was actually a immature bird, which you can tell because it's eye is a light gray, while adult's have fully white eyes (thus the name), and since it was immature we couldn't determine the sex.
Goofy ahh photo but here's a lady cardinal I banded, she was very polite for a cardinal! Northern cardinals are NOTORIOUS in bird banding for biting HARD and pinching, which doesn't feel good and is especially annoying when you trying to remove net around the bird's head or back wings and it's just biting the shit out of your hand. But this lady was relatively nice. I'm holding her here in "bander's grip," where I'm primarily just lightly encircling her neck (which is longer than you think) with two of my fingers and applying no pressure. You just seatbelt em.
Front facing gray-cheeked thrush... he's going to curse us... Anywho he was exciting because we don't get gray-cheeked tooooooo often. You can ID them based on the fact they look like every other thrush ever, but desaturated. It's again in the name.
This was exciting!!! Not a rare bird (obviously) but we don't often net blue jays! And they're sooooooo gorgeous!!!! This guy was a little messy in the net because it was "backpacked," which means that it had net around both of it's wings and some of that net was connected, so it can pull pretty tight and make it difficult to get off while preventing any feather damaged. We almost were going to cut the net but my friend eventually succeeded in getting it off one wing, then the other went easy. Such a cutie!!!
Lastly definitely not a bird, but this cool little guy decided to keep me company while I took down a net! It was probably attracted by the bright orange of the stake's we used to tie the post for the net down, but it even landed on me for a little bit!!! Feeling like snow white in this bitch oh my god. I love bugs so much man, every time we go to this location I'm both bird and bug hunting. Saw a wheelbug here recently, very cool!!!!
I'm so tired but this weekend have been so fun!
There was a benefits house show run by a club at my college Friday, 10 bucks at the door for a 3 band set 8:30-11:30 PM, and what a good deal! The locals bands were all very cool. I usually dance but don't go into the mosh pit because most other concerts I've gone to had bigger and older crowds and I didn't want to eat shit and get a concussion (I am 5'3 under 125 lbs), but there was only like 30 people moshing sooooo, I absolutely tweaked out in the front middle and shoved/got shoved around in the pit, and it was so fun! I didn't eat shit either!! The show was close enough to my apartment that I just walked home but stone-cold sober I was basically stumbling home with how dizzy and light-headed I was, in a really good way! I don't have any photos, I was too busy yapping and losing my mind.
Getting loose also made me a bit more socialable than usual, and I had fun talking with some cool folks inbetween sets. Blowing dirt out my nose the whole rest of the night and tracking dust into the apartment, but there's truly nothing better than tweaking out to live music surrounded by other people also tweaking out, fuck yeahhhhhh. Go to local shows people! They're cheap (sometimes free!) and supporting your local bands is cool. The first band that played joined us in the pit when the other sets started, it was awesome. And don't be shy to dance weird in the front, no one cares and on the off chance they do, they're losers!!! Who the hell goes to a house show and then just stands there???
And then, even though it greatly pained me, I woke up at 5 AM (didn't fall asleep until like 1 AM) to go bird banding because the birds wait for no one. We've had a cold front here, and hoped it would drive some more migratory birds here, but even though Audubon's migration tracker showed migration ramping up, there were nothing special in our area?? Birders went out and saw nothing, we didn't get any unusual birds at the station, fucked up! Regardless, it was nice to not have to stand in the sweltering heat and sun for the 6 hours we're out there so some benefits. Since we didn't get too many birds I didn't do toooooo much but here's a gorgeous prothonotary warbler!!
! All birds were handled with the appropriate permits! Do not handle or catch bird's without a permit or the supervision of someone with a permit/sub-permit, it is both illegal and dangerous to the health of the bird !
Sooo pretty! These guys sometimes nest in cypress knees you know? Such a cool bird...I didn't work with this guy, I banded a lovely little juvenile redwing blackbird, who I also extracted and was very nice and polite, and then I started extracting a absolute evil, pissed off juvenile northern cardinal... we actually had to call our masterbander over because even though he looked fine at first, he was actually double bagged (which is harder to remove) and he was so so mad. Like I couldn't grab and move the net around his wings or head at all because as soon as I was in biting radius, it would go for it 100% of the time and northern cardinals HURT. They're notorious. We joke that they put the cardinal on page 666 of the bird identification book (which we use to sex and age birds) because of this. They bite way harder than what you'd expect from their size and they're so good at pinching your skin or grabbing the cuticle of your nails. Point is my hand hurt way after I got home. Other than that I just hung out with the banding boys (gender-neutral...actually most were women...).
AND THEN, because apparently we all hate sleeping, we did banding AGAIN on Sunday. At a different station. We just like alternate between the two for different sessions but it's all the same folks. Compared to the day before, this day was POPPING (relatively speaking!). We got 3 different species of thrush (veery, gray-checked thrush, swainson's thrush), which is exciting, and I got to process more birds!! Yipee! Let's looky here:
Here's a cute little white-eyed vireo I got to process! I love their calls, they're silly and they sneeze at the end. Also, this individual was actually a immature bird, which you can tell because it's eye is a light gray, while adult's have fully white eyes (thus the name), and since it was immature we couldn't determine the sex.
Goofy ahh photo but here's a lady cardinal I banded, she was very polite for a cardinal! Northern cardinals are NOTORIOUS in bird banding for biting HARD and pinching, which doesn't feel good and is especially annoying when you trying to remove net around the bird's head or back wings and it's just biting the shit out of your hand. But this lady was relatively nice. I'm holding her here in "bander's grip," where I'm primarily just lightly encircling her neck (which is longer than you think) with two of my fingers and applying no pressure. You just seatbelt em.
Front facing gray-cheeked thrush... he's going to curse us... Anywho he was exciting because we don't get gray-cheeked tooooooo often. You can ID them based on the fact they look like every other thrush ever, but desaturated. It's again in the name.
This was exciting!!! Not a rare bird (obviously) but we don't often net blue jays! And they're sooooooo gorgeous!!!! This guy was a little messy in the net because it was "backpacked," which means that it had net around both of it's wings and some of that net was connected, so it can pull pretty tight and make it difficult to get off while preventing any feather damaged. We almost were going to cut the net but my friend eventually succeeded in getting it off one wing, then the other went easy. Such a cutie!!!
Lastly definitely not a bird, but this cool little guy decided to keep me company while I took down a net! It was probably attracted by the bright orange of the stake's we used to tie the post for the net down, but it even landed on me for a little bit!!! Feeling like snow white in this bitch oh my god. I love bugs so much man, every time we go to this location I'm both bird and bug hunting. Saw a wheelbug here recently, very cool!!!!
