Its Snowing to beat the band here all day, 25 cm of wet snow expected - our first snow for this season. Following are four consecutive images from earlier this summer. These images were taking during the banding of the young Purple Martins residing in two large Martin houses.

Top Image: Female Purple martin waiting anxiously for the Martin house to be raised again so that she may feed her young. She has a large Dogday Harvest fly in her beak.


Looks like she is getting impatient.


Yup, she ate it herself. Perhaps she was just getting hungry and, or maybe the bug's best before date was expiring, as it took a few hours for the young to be banded, checked for worms, given a drink and then having their apartment cleaned.


"That was good!" - Shortly afterward, she took off to get a fresh supply of bugs.