Go Dems!

Yay we have both houses!!!!! See: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/09/va.senate/index.html
That is amazing, though there is also bad news as well. My lovely dirt road is now paved. Yes, it´s true, my dad informed me and it is so sad.
http://graultykin.blogspot.com/2006/10/ode-to-road.html
But anyway, I´ve been having fun and eating my fair share of icecream (this place called Tuteo fredo is simply amazing)I´ve also been working on a project to study bird composition in could forest and a pine plantation. I get to hold birds in my hand and look at them and love them all up (just kidding I´m not that obsessed, but it is cool to hold a hummingbird in your hand)So I´m doing that with a Christine (from Colby) and we´re almost done with the data collection part. Now we just have to write the damned thing. But now I have to do sokme midterms and other junk so this will have to be quick. I´ll do a quick run down on the pictures (and by the way there may be more to come.) Any questions just email me.
1. That´s a hummingbird nest with a 3 day old chick in it. It´s a bit fuzzy but I´ll get a better one
2.This one didn´t come out that great but it´s me trying to be artsy and show how sttep the slopes are.
3. Oh shoot, I forget what kind of bird this is, i´ll have to get back to you. But we got it in a 12m by 2m net we use to id and mark birds in our study area.
4. This is a backlog of birds we had to id. Each one of those bags has a bird. Kind of like an ornithologist´s christmas tree, no?
5. This is the crew (minus me) From right to left: Catherine, Elliot, Amy, Lindsey, Christine, Kristina and Emily. Kristina is the bird expert and we´re having a little teachable moment. How cute.
6. This is a woodpecker we caught. It was a hell of a time getting him out of the net.
7. This one doesn´t show up too well either. But anyway, it´s a shining starfrontlet humming bird. Pretty amazing feathers, right?

So taht´s the slideshow and there are pleasntly more and I´ll be taking more as well. Maybe we´ll catch a toucan. By the way I saw a Gray Breasted Mountain Toucan from about 15 m. I was amazing. Here´s a pic

http://www.birding-peru.com/upload/picsfiles/Gray-breasted%20Mountain-Toucan%20small.jpg

So that´s it for a few days at least. We leve monday for a mini trip to an alpaca raising community near mabato (north of here) We´ll be there for 3-4 days come back to Cuenca then go back out into the firld. Keep in touch and I´ll update asap.

Also, as for my spelling etc. I´m currently typing on a crappy, sticky, letter white-outed on keyboad in an internet cafe. So sorry.