What’s up June?!  Yeah I made it through May, only two more months.  May sure did go fast so I wonder how quick June will go.

            Today was pretty awesome.  Even though we had to start decently early, 5:00, it wasn’t a bad morning.  We had our first of many fledgling checks, which consists of arriving at the cavity before sunrise and then following the fledglings to ID them and then sex them by their plumage.  It is going to be the first of many, but its ok, the early morning don’t bother me any more.  After the birds flew off ten minutes before, still don’t know why they were out that early, we headed over to another cluster to band before we BURN!  Forest did the banding this morning because he had an injury occur to one of the two nestlings when it was extracted from the cavity.  The leg on the nestling broke so we had to splint it with scotch tape before we could band it.  Poor thing, he was not happy. 

            After banding we headed to our weekly meeting with Crowell and all the big guns were there today.  We briefly went over the results of last weeks work and then got a confirmation on the burn.  I was pumped but Michael Crowell told me that I need to stick close to someone because of my inexperience.  I guess that was just for peace of mind for the other big wigs because I soon as we got out there I had a drip torch in my hand.  It was so much fun.  We burned 100 acres.  Some spots did burn as nicely as we had hoped but others did wonderful.  Working with all those guys is awesome too.  It’s like hanging with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour guys.  I was tearing up on several occasions from some of the conversations.  We were at it about six hours today and it wasn’t too dangerous.  It did get a little sketchy when Michael, the fire boss, told Dan and I to go get the Ranger after we had finished our strips.  Dan and I were running back strips to lessen the run of head fires when the wind picked up and we got the call “6 (Michael) to 96 (Me), go get that Ranger and take it to the road.”  We had parked it in a raked area under one of the cavity trees, so it was safe from fire but we had to cross a few back fires that had caught a little wind.  We came up to the strip and Dan is like, “Awwh, just keep thems feets a movin’ an it won’t git yus too bad.”  I was like, “Yeah, sure, high knees right.”  So we made a dash through it and it got a little toasty for a moment but it was a rush. 

            After all the blocks had been lit, I had a good time sitting around with them and cutting up.  It was a welcomed change of pace today and it was awesome that I got to help as much as I did.  I sure wouldn’t mind doing some burning for a while.

            When I got home from the 12 hour day, I took a shower and then took a 3 hour nap.  It was Niiceee!  I then wrote this so my brain isn’t fully functional yet so sorry for the grammar.  Tomorrow is another early day and long day but hopefully I can get the pictures of the fire up then.