Volunteering for RINS.

I like volunteering.  I like nature and photography.  When they come together it's nice.  I met some interesting people in my Leadership Park City class and one of them, Colleen, is a birder.  We were talking about birding in the area and she mentioned that she used to volunteer for RINS, Raptor Inventory Nest Survey. They use volunteers to track the nests and babies of eagles, hawks and owls.

Between kids, work, and a territory that was a long ways off, she stopped volunteering for them a while back.  Now we have partnered up and taken a territory that didn't have an owner.  It's about 30 miles from Park City, but it is an area where I have already made numerous trips to doing my photography including the Sage Grouse.

We did a first trip to the territory yesterday, knowing that a lot of the hawks had migrated south, but hoping to find the nests before leaves on the trees make it almost impossible. We saw lots of nests and found the edges of our territory, but we need to do a more serious GPS mapping later this winter. The happy surprise was seeing three Bald Eagles.  I wouldn't have expected them for another month or two.

 This younger eagle flew right over us.

 As soon as I moved to get into a better position, this one flew off.  Bastard!

I think this work will be a lot of fun.  It will be nice to have someone along on my photo trips (no offense Jasper).  I also think that we will find lots of excellent subjects for photos.  I think hawks will be easy, but owls and falcons will be the best finds.

You probably won't hear any more about this until summer.

- Steve Joyce