Silly Saturday ...

... a face only a mother can love?

NO! I love this little face ... and everything he/she represents! 
 
What an incredible day we had today!  I had read about a citizen science project happening at Minsi Lake where we kayak often. Here at the lake there is a colony of Purple Martin birds and this project is a weekly banding of the many chicks in this colony. The project is run by Tim Wilson with help from many volunteers. They check and clean out each of the 144 nesting gourds and band all of the chicks. This is done over several weeks as the chicks become old enough to band. I've added a collage in Extras with two more pictures from this event. The upper left photo is a shot of inside one of the nests. These are newly hatched chicks ... and couple unhatched eggs.  You can read (I hope this link works) more about the results on Tim Wilson's Facebook post. Please let me know if this link doesn't work so I can figure something else out to share his comments.

After participating in the Martin chick banding we went to the other side of the lake to do some kayaking. Hey ... why not! We were there! The other three pictures in my collage were taken either whilst kayaking or afterwards. The water snake was seen as we were having our lunch sitting by the lake.

Since we were up at the lake so early (9am!) we were home by 1:30-ish. And just in time for the rain to start! It rained for the remainder of the day.