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.