Wow, those chicks are big!

I took my first vacation since starting this internship last week. It's only been 7 days since I saw the chicks, but holy crap they are big!

Only one more chick fledged since I left. That's ok... we're still learning. 5 more to fledge and we are golden.

I finally got a picture of the chicks flying! but I can't post it right now due to bandwith the size of a sewing needle.

I'm glad I had my vacation last week, because it's about to get busy again. As soon as the birds are fledged, we're going to band them and release them in different areas of the refuge. At that point I'll be tracking them all day, everyday. In the meantime I'm keeping myself busy writing my thesis, entering data for Richard, and figuring out the right statistical model for this data I'm analyzing for Marianne. I'm sure life would be easier if I had a friendly statistics buddy I could ply with questions. Any takers?