Back to Work

It was a good weekend but now it's back to getting rid of the invasive species. We've done a lot of spraying already this week now that things are back to normal. It goes much slower than it did a couple of months ago because there are so many petrel burrows to watch out for.

There are two people out here now that are doing some work on our lead paint problem. They are sampling the ground near the buildings and checking the blood levels of lead in albatross chicks. They've been finding that there are very high lead levels within 5m of the buildings. Some of the chicks have such high blood lead levels that their analyzer can't even measure it. The chicks aren't old enough to really see the developmental problems yet, but many of them will get "droop wing", where their wings will droop and scrape the ground when they walk. Most of those die. They don't try to eat the lead paint, but when they pick up sand to make their nests or just pick up little pieces to play with, they end up ingesting it. That's another one of our big problems out here besides the plastic, marine debris, invasive species, coral bleaching, etc. It's another thing that we are just waiting for the money to take care of it.
Dasha and I were putting this little albatross out of Greg's backyard all the time. It kept on getting back in and the parents couldn't feed it. It looked like it was too big for the holes, but I found out otherwise.

Now we have blocked all the holes so it stays out where it can get fed.