much belated post

Well here it is 4th of July weekend. The birds just kept me much too busy to keep up the blog. I ended up banding ~40 birds or so this year and finding 27 nests. The sites I nest searched on held small numbers of birds and many didn't produce anything. Interesting and alarming! I began a pilot study looking at the effect of recreation on productivity. I actually got all but 1 male on the 2 sites banded and it will be interesting to see how many return to these or nearby sites next year. We ended up with >50% return rates across the banding sites! I will not be analyzing the results of the pilot data until later this fall. I am currently in the midst of another field season up in Missouri and planning my wedding later this fall!