Fri, Mar. 10

Clear and cold. -7F at 7am.

I spent the afternoon in town looking for new nests. I found one new pair building a nest by the hospital. The male of the pair was not banded, but I didn't get a look at the female. There are two nests in the NER headquarters, but no birds were around. I found an old nest up on snow king, but the resident pair was taking sticks away from it to build on their new nest. I have not located the new nest yet. There appears to be a territorial bird further west on snow king up from the post office. I found where the nest was last year on the high school, but the nest had been taken down or blown out. Neither of the Food Town pair is banded, but they are still building. The Teton Inn nest has blown out.

When I got to town at noon, I spotted two ravens in the Home Ranch parking lot that looked pretty cozy, so I went in to take a look. When I stopped, I noticed that one was banded, Yellow K (a nestling from '05). A first-year with a girlfriend!! That's unheard of. The conventional thought is that ravens don't breed in the wild before the age of three. This bird is not even one, and was feeding another raven! I doubt that they were on a territory at the time, but still an interesting observation.