LIVE from Texas

This is one of my Golden-cheeks from today. He's in the middle of the photo but my camera is too slow, otherwise it would have been a lot closer-up picture--- he was so close to me I could have reached out and touched him. They are very nervy little birds and people don't really seem to phase them.





Below are some buildings that the soldiers play fight in and around.


I was in Golden-cheek hell today, or at least hell for the poor person (me) who had to figure out which singing bird was which, follow him around and start mapping his territory. I ended up mapping 10 birds; I had to give up on a few because they were so tightly packed I could no longer tell who was who, and which way was up. I ran in so many circles today that with the sun being behind clouds all morning, I finally had to use my compass to figure out where to go; I got so turned around! (Shocking fact--- I don't get turned around that often! I can navigate better in the middle of nowhere than in the middle of a city).

But to finish off our morning---- driving out of C4 (the study site we were in today) we saw these bits of pink flagging tape in the middle of our "road" (more like a really bad trail)and finally realized that they were markers for the soldiers who were up ahead of us working on disarming explosives (some of which we drove past while trying to figure out what the hell was going on.The words "oh shit it's a bomb" unfortunately are not to unusual on an actively training military base.) But, I did get to see my cute red- headed soldier boy from yesterday who remembered me and ended up walking our truck through their training area. They had a pretty sweet robot and lots of cool-looking toys!!!!

Always kept on our toes when dealing with the Army, I must say that every one of the Military personnel that I have had direct contact with have been really nice people.

Oh and random comment for anyone suffering from motion sickness: Bioband is the answer! I have really bad motion sickness issues and C4 is about an hour of 5 mile an hour bumps, dips, jolts-- pretty much hell on earth for someone like me. Today was the first time I have ever made the trip without my head hanging out the window, and wishing that one of the nice soldier boys would shoot me and end my misery! It works by applying pressure to a pressure point in your wrist.