Yippee!

Gladis finally moved out and we have the apartment to ourselves! Well, almost to ourselves, as the painters who are working on the outside of the whole building have been coming through our apartment to paint our balconies. (We kinda have the penthouse suite per say, as we are the only unit with balconies. I'm going to have to plan a party to utilize it too!!!) Anyhow, it is much better not to worry about being bombarded with rapid fire questions in Spanish when you just wake up and can't understand English let alone a foreign language with an even more foreign accent. hehe

Today we had our first chicks in the field. They are so cute! Consider that the eggs are only a little more than one centimeter by two centimeters (about the size of the first joint of your pinkie finger). These are some really tiny chicks! This picture shows six of the little guys on their second day out of their eggs. I can't wait for even more!!!

The day before yesterday Laura came with me to watch how to band the birds. These guys are much harder to hold in the photographers grip, as their legs are so stubby and they are not very calm birds. Oh well. That won't stop me from taking other pictures of them!!!

Man, while we were waiting for one of the females to fly into her box (which we had boobie trapped), the horses were playing out a soap opera. First, two of the males start fighting, aka charging at each other and being noisy. Then the pinto (I don't know my horses, but that's the painted one in my language) mounts the female and goes at it! By the time my eyes drifted from the nest box and saw what was happening, I missed the picture by just seconds! Too bad. The other male got really angry again and kept charging the pinto every time he came near his girl! I wonder who's babies she'll end up having! :)

Oh, and Kels, we've got tons of Lapwings (Southern Lapwings) which are pretty birds but really noisy. I'll post more of a bird list with more pictures once I take them. And I need to figure out the English names for the birds too. (Btw, this is pretty much the saddest bird I've ever seen. It is the pet of the ranching family at our site, but it looks like a rehabilitation project gone bad... I think it's a Monk Parakeet as we have tons of them nesting in the power towers, but I definitely think it too is failing on the godliness. hehe)