Bird Banding

This morning we started to put permanent bands on the albatross chicks. It will take a few days. We'll put metal bands and field readable plastic bands on all of the chicks in our plots. They are pretty snappy, and their bills are getting big and sharp. At least so far they haven't made me bleed yet (at least while banding). We only like to band them in the morning, when it is cooler. They get more upset when it's hot out and will throw up their food. So this afternoon was another half a day of spraying verbesina.


This turtle doesn't have anything to do with banding albatross chicks or spraying weeds, but it really had a beautiful shell and was pretty big. I would guess at least 250 lbs, probably more. A lot of times the big ones have algae growing on their shells so they aren't quite as nice.