Back At Midway

I'm back at Midway after a couple of year break at Tern Island at French Frigate Shoals (not technically a break, but you know what I mean). Managing Tern Island was a wonderful experience, but it's also great to get back to Midway. I'll be the Wildlife Biologist out here now, and once again, I'm not writing this as an official USFWS blog, I'm just writing about some of the stuff that I see out here.

I've been really busy catching up on things here and I'll try to do a weekly blog, instead of the daily blog that I used to do. That was way too much work!!!

A lot has happened since I've been here, but a lot is the same. We have 16 people out here to count every albatross nest at Midway, so that's a big project, considering that there's probably over 400,000 of them. I've got the volunteers doing a lot of albatross banding in the plots where we look at survivorship of adults. We're keeping busy with Laysan Duck surveys every week. And the place looks great with all the work Greg and the Thai crew have been doing on invasive plants. I'm not going to put a lot of pictures up today, but you'll be seeing them each post.

This was my ride back out to Midway this time. Our usual plane was having some problems and the Coast Guard happened to be coming to Midway to Medevac a commercial fisherman who was dropped off on Midway. It was a good ride so thanks USCG!

There are still a lot of familiar faces out here, including Herbie the Hybrid, who I recognize from a few years ago.

The Laysan ducks are doing great. They are everywhere. When it rains, they take over every puddle in the road.

It's nice to see the orchard is still here for fresh oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and limes.

This ulua was a little too friendly. It was actually bumping into one of our visitors. It was a lot bigger than it looks in this picture.