Six birds needed rescuing today: three are in quite poor shape, and one is the youngest chick we’ve seen this year. Some bird parents are in obvious denial about the season’s end. Hopefully these are few. It looks like we’ll have to keep an eye out for distressed birds for a while yet.

Along these lines, I am attaching to this mail a tentative flyer for posting at the garages and basketball court near the rookery. Claudia will finish it off and post it. Please contact her with any suggestions about the wording and information and let her know whether you would like your name on it and, if so, what telephone number you want next to your name. I recommend that we list two or three first names and accompanying phone numbers.

How about a lunch meeting next Wednesday or Thursday (Aug 9 or 10 at noon) to discuss what we tried, ideas that came up, and how best to proceed? If one of these times won’t work for you, let me know.

I have been trying to reach the Grounds Maintenance Supervisor, hoping that a friendly initial meeting (we can send him our more formal letter after that) will help build a good relationship with Physical Plant. So far we’re still playing phone tag.

In case some of you are wondering about the species of birds who nest in the rookery, they include, roughly in order of abundance:

There might be others. These are the ones I’ve personally seen. Except for two snowy egrets, all the birds we’ve picked up this year have been the chicks of cattle egrets and great egrets. This is quite puzzling and interesting.