And per request of Mark Foelster:
In other Hyde County news, a couple of us attended a Valentine's Night Pancake and Sausage Supper to benefit the volunteer fire department. Think this would be popular as a bike and build fundraiser!? I had maybe 4 pancakes loaded with toppings and washed it down with delicious sweet tea. Then after dinner, and watching one of my coworkers eat a sausage wrapped in a pancake, we got a tour of the firehouse, and a crash course in firefighting. We at least learned the basic steps of how to get water running through a hose. Good enough for now!
I've got some bird pictures to post! First, the beautiful Swamp Sparrow. Who thought a sparrow could be so nice looking? Well, this is the one we're after with the radio tracking, the bird we band, and the bird we're all becoming quite familiar with. They like to hang out really low on shrubs, and with their dark color, these can be tough to spot.
Here's me and a Downy Woodpecker. Surprisingly, it's a lot smaller than something like a cardinal. I always thought of woodpeckers as being pretty large birds. But these are small. We must have caught it when it was swooping down to head to another tree. It was pecking pretty hard at my hand for a while, but then it calmed down and we got some great pictures!
Weather's getting warmer down here in NC, hope the same is true up north. We've got a trip planned in a week or so that involves a ferry over to the Outer Banks, then driving up from the southern most point to meet with a birding group from Virginia Tech! Pictures will surely follow.
