Well, it's week five and going strong! Like we do every week, we started the week checking on the paragrine falcons that we have been observing. We were beginning to lose hope that the pair had reared any offspring, but this week we heard the youngsters! We can't wait to see them venture out of the nest and start flying. It should be any day now. We'll continue to observe them until they fledge, to try to pinpoint exactly when they start flying for the first time. We also started doing some habitat assessment in sage grouse habitat. Unfortunately, we only saw signs of sage grouse in one of our plots. Hopefully that isn't any indication of the presence of these cool looking birds. Part of this assessment is to note signs of any other animals, and we found sign of cows, wild horses, coyote, elk, deer, rabbit, and sage grouse. Plenty of animals use that area! On our way out to the study site, we got to see wild horses for the first time! We were beginning to wonder if they really did exist! We had a pretty good view of them, which was lucky for us, because they are usually very skittish around people. We also had another first this week: RAIN! We are coming into what the people of Utah call "monsoon season," although I highly suspect that the term monsoon is quite an exageration!