If I Leave Here Tomorrow

Today was banding day at Kodak. The eyases were removed from the nest box and taken to the banding area at roughly 10:15 am (I was sound asleep, dammit!) The chicks were sexed and banded; here are their names and sexes:

Esperanza (Spanish - Hope) - Female Silver

Ihteram {EH -t'ram} (Arabic - Respect) - Female Yellow

Fulmine {FUL-meen-ay} (Italian - Lightning) - Male Blue

Skye - Female Green

Aconcagua {ah-cone-CAH-oo-ah} (Andes Mt.) - Male Red

Aconcagua was the last chick to hatch. (All colored bands are on the chicks' right legs; there are black/red and black/green bands on the left legs; these are DEC bands denoting females and males.)

I'm not going to comment on this, I just wanted to put it out there. It's a post from the Discussion Board.

Sharon from California - "Call me jingoistic, but once again, all of the eyas names are foreign and 4/5 very difficult to spell and pronounce. These are American birds -- are there no American names available to give them??

(Note - the names were given by various members of the banding audience - including schoolchildren.)

If you'd like to view a gallery of today's occurrences, here's the link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?collid=679890614205 

The eyases are all sleeping in a pile right now, exhausted after a long and draining day.

Peace.