Baby birbs
The eggs have hatched, and Momma Birb is feeding the youngsters. I’ve gotten a few glimpses of their fuzzy little heads from my blind; there are at least two of them in the nest, possibly three. Sorry, no photos; this is not a good time to disturb them. Momma is spending more and more time away from the nest as it is, to gather up enough food for them. I’ve seen no sign of Poppa yet; last year, he showed up to help watch the babies when Momma was off feeding. I hope he’s okay.
Geology posting is likely to be light for a while. Virtually all the trails in northern New Mexico are closed due to fire hazard, plus gas to drive anywhere interesting is now $4.87 a gallon, plus I’m making a serious effort to produce a paper-and-ink version of the book. I’ve done yet another pass and gotten it down to under 500 pages, but I’m guessing it’s still much too long and image-rich for my likely publisher. Perhaps after it’s turned down*, I’ll have time to revamp the online version (condensing it to book form highlighted some of its deficiencies to me) and to post some here on the geology of the Socorro area, in anticipation of the fall field conference.
Oh, and I’m scheduled to give the presentation at our next Los Alamos Geological Society meeting a week from Tuesday. I’ll be talking about “Unconventional Fossils”, meaning, trace fossils and chemical fossils. I’m reasonably confident it will be interesting — I have some good examples to show.
*Yeah. I’ve always been a pessimist.