so today was officially the hottest day of the year as of yet (114 degrees of fun) as well as the first official day of summer! so it was extremely odd when laura and i were driving back from liberty and noticed a large raptor in the tree behind our house and realized it was none other than a juvenile osprey!! poor kid! obviously her parents didn't tell her to migrate back up north for the summer. i don't have high hopes for her survival either (as you can see she's panting up a storm and drooping her wings severely), so we will be keeping a close watch on the poor thing.

in other news, nina and i set a liberty record for the most birds brought into the facility at one time with 170 individuals! this was thanks to our work with transwestern pipeline that is installing a natural gas pipeline throughout the state. despite its elevated level of environmental impact (sigh), they are attempting to comply with the federal migratory species act which protects all native birds within the united states. thus, they are basically pulling all nests in their path and the liberty biologists are helping them with this task and bringing them back to liberty for rehabilitation. so on this trip, 106 nests were pulled, most of which were doves and a little over half were eggs.

during this crazy baby bird flinging event, i had a slight vehicular incident. i apparently didn't properly check my tire positioning on one of the ramps and slipped off on the passenger side. it was quite nerve racking, but luckily it was a lot more embarrassing than anything else and i came out with little more than a slight scratch on my front tire and wheel. ah, the joys of off road driving.

so as always, it's been a busy year here at liberty. babies are everywhere you look and of course many of them are the cutest little things you've ever seen. we have gotten in a lot of mammals this year. unfortunately we don't keep baby mammals at the facility since they need 24 hour care, so most of them go to other rehabbers. the little peccary was one of the cutest things but already wild and nippy. it's amazing how long and razor sharp a 1-week old babys teeth can be! the ground squirrel, on the other hand was as sweet as can be other than the loud crying for food. poor thing. we even got in a kitten that was so tiny and soft that it fell asleep in the palm of my hand! of course we don't take in domestic animals but that doesn't always stop people from dropping them off!

it's also fun when we get in precocial babies. quail and killdeer are some of the funnest examples but we also get in ducklings and goslings from time to time. precocial means they can eat on their own and walk around as soon as they're hatched and dried off. these guys are always cute fuzzy versions of their parents and are nice because we don't have to spend as much time feeding them as the altricial babies.

speeking of altricial babies, we have tons of those as well. some of my favorites are the house finches that come with a fuzzy mohawk as soon as they hatch out of the egg! it's tough to miss-ID those guys. we also get in lots of mockingbirds who grace the orphan care area with their "MEEP" noise. i still laugh every time i hear it despite having heard it a million times. due to our contract with the transwestern pipeline, we've gotten in lots of eggs this year of various species. one of my favorite hatches was of a little towhee that popped up with the top of the egg shell still on its head!

we don't just get little guys in though. we recently got in a nest of hatchling ravens from prescott valley that got caught in a freak snow storm a couple weeks ago. they were completely covered in snow and came in ice cold and sopping wet. unfortunately hypothermia caught up to most of the chicks, but one made it through and is now a big, screaming, blue-eyed, and feathered nestling. he's doing great! we also recently hatched our very first roadrunner from an egg. coincidentally, we got in a 2-week old roadrunner the same day. we let them hang out together a bit to make them feel safe and comfortable. they have the cutest method of begging. i will have to tape it and put it up here.