The Last RCW Banding

Friday was the last RCW banding of the 2012 season. It's been a busy few months, and while it is nice to not be as busy (especially in this heat!) I am sad that there are no more trees to climb and ugly baby woodpeckers to play with. My time here at Carolina Sandhills is almost up, and it's been fantastic. I am exceptionally glad I took this internship and was able to spend 12 weeks here working with RCW's. Birds are always fun, and climbing trees is awesome, but I think the best part of this internship has been all the people I've been privileged to work with. While I'm not always excited about getting up early or having to tromp through the chigger/horse fly/ poison oak infested forest to look for cavity trees, every day is still fun because of the people here. I'm not sure where the future will take me after I leave this place, but I'll never forget the experiences and people. Especially Brady Vaassen, fellow intern and one of my housemates, who is sitting here on the couch next to me asking when I'll write a blog post about him and trying to get me to move so he can have the entire couch. Just because you're 6ft 5in and a bit doesn't mean you always get to hog the couch.  

Pictures were taken by the fabulous Whitney Wallet, intern extraordinaire and friend of the first class.

20ft up a longleaf pine at a RCW cavity. And yes, I do have a turkey feather stuck in my hair. 

Trying to get the nestling out of the cavity with my noose. 

Nestling secured in the bag slung around my back, and heading down to the ground to get it banded.

Getting ready to band (or standing around looking important).  That's Evan Brashier on the right (not an intern, he actually gets paid), he banded the chick since I got to climb up and noose it. 

Chick in hand, I make my stand, ready to band, best in the land.

The passing of the RCW chick. 

Evan banding the chick. It was about 9 or10 days old. 

Climbing back up to put the newly-banded nestling back home. 

I don't normally get this excited about putting nestlings back, but there were some interesting comments coming from the peanut gallery on the ground (aka Whitney and Evan).