Baby birds

In the past couple months at work, I've been spending a lot of my time doing nest searching and monitoring. We maintain a nearly 100% banded population of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers within a large part of Eglin, and banding nestlings is much more efficient than trying to band all of these birds as adults.


This baby RCWO is about seven days old. It can't open it's eyes yet, but has plenty of strength to lift it's head and beg for food.


I happened upon this Common Nighthawk nest shortly after the two nestlings had hatched. The second chick is hidden behind this one, and is still wet from being inside the egg.


We use cameras on telescoping poles to look into the nest cavities. This is a video of the monitor showing three young nestlings. When I turn the camera light off, it simulates an adult blocking the light when bringing food, thus the begging.


This is a long video of me climbing a tree to capture two nestlings to band them. We use a noose to pull them out of the hole.