Vee Day

At soccer tonight, the Thais played for twice the normal time.  Again, I was nearly brought to my grave by such enormous physical strain.  Now I'm back at home, unwinding, trying to get another TPAD up before dozing off.  I also have to start packing up all my crud, do laundry, buy t-shirts for my family, etc.  It's just so overwhelming.  Life is tough out here, ya know?


For work today, after monitoring our reproduction plots, we gave a banding demonstration for the Pacific Seabird Group, who are spending a week out here.  Then we passed out some banding kits to them, so now they can go around the island and replace old worn bands that need to be swapped out.  See, back in the day they used to band albatross with aluminum bands.  These were nice cause aluminum is really soft and nice to work with, so the banding was super easy.  The problem with these bands is that they wear easily.   After about twenty years or so you can no longer read them.  This is a problem for birds that can live to be sixty or more years old.  Also, they can spread open, fall off, or get caught in things like fishing nets.  So nowadays, we try to find them all and replace them with the much more durable stainless steel bands.


In closing, I'd like to wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day.  I hope you are all spending it with someone special.  Mahalo.

I decided that if I couldn't have my valentine with me today, this little guy should fill in.  This is the only Fairy Tern chick I've seen during my stay out here.  Almost as cute as my real valentine.  The tiny branch you see him perched on is where his mother lays the egg, incubates it, broods her chick and everything.  It's some sort of miracle that it never falls off through all of this.  Amazing.

A much more traditional nesting strategy:  Hide in a clump of plants and build a cup out of sticks.  This Canary chose a potted plant in front of one of the Thai houses.  Much safer than a bare two inch limb.

XLVI

Superbowl was horrible.  Niners shoulda been there.  L.I.P.  I got out of the house for a good little while today.  Which was good.  Annie One-sock pounded on my bedroom door and forced me to go for a morning bike ride.  Thank you Ann.  The rest of the day was mostly superbowl.  Yawn.  The halftime show was exciting though.  It really was one of the dumbest things I've seen since Bush was president.  It's astounding that millions of people watch that shit.  And apparently I'm one of them.  Well, Happy Superbowl, loyal listeners.  Mahalo.

Fairy Terns are just like Elephant Seals.  If you run out of things to take photos of, just shoot the Fairy Terns.  Guranteed success.

Annie One-sock is by far the best swimmer alive today.  Here, she gives a suspicious Great Frigatebird the stink eye.  

Remember Your Clipboard

A pretty good Wednesday.  I started out by doing a Laysan Duck survey on Eastern.  I even got my very own College Kid Interns from Duke.  Pahtree see uh and K Tlin joined me and learned how to do an official, up to protocol survey of one of the rarest birds in the world.  After that, I ate boo koo rice and stew for lunch and then went out to pick up trash off of South Beach.  We picked up hella.  I haven't weighed it yet, but I reckon it was literally tens of kilograms.  Well, I'm almost late for dinner, so Ima go eat more.

Albaporn.

I was Fairy Tern Whispering.

Whale Sharks And Fairy Terns: Opposites Attract

I just got home from a talk and slide show given by Susan Scott.  She is one of the bird counters and has been all up inside the Sea of Cortez.  She's seen hella.  Her best photos were of Whale Sharks, which are the biggest fish in the world.  Apparently there are a shit ton of them at the northern end of the S.O.C.  You can just go out and swim with them like you're some kind of King of the Sea Nature God.  Anyway, now I hella want to go there and get my Whale Shark on.  

Dan's Photos That Should Be On Hallmark Greeting Cards: Part 2.

This is me nearly losing a finger.

Midway: Day 2

So I may go for a TPAD marathon today.  I'm considering switching to writing the blog in the evening at the end of every day.  We'll see. Yesterday was my first full day on island.  I went through an orientation Powerpoint and then I drove a golf cart all around everywhere, seeing some of our work sites and trying not to run over any Goonies.  After dinner, I was trying to TPAD but I just fell asleep and failed at my one true purpose in life: Blogging.  For now, I'm probably going to be putting up  all the photos of the Life Birds that I get.  This should carry us through the next couple of days.  Enjoy.

This is a White Tern.  Like most of  the birds out here, they are very friendly and curious.  One of the other volunteers thinks they look evil.  I say they pretty.

Brown Noddy on the runway.  Another Life Bird from yesterday.