Short-tails

A lot of good stuff has been going on out here, as usual. I just got back from Sunday bowling night. I haven't bowled since I was here a couple of years ago. We also had beach volleyball on Friday night, which I also hadn't done since I was last here. About 80% of the people are still the same, so it's almost like I never left.
I forgot to tell you some big Midway news last week. We have a short-tailed albatross nest on Eastern Island. That's big news because there haven't been any recorded nests of this endangered species outside of Japan. I've shown you pictures of these two birds a couple of years ago, and they've now got an egg that should hatch within the next week or two. We've got a camera on Eastern Island to keep track of them. It seems like our decoys actually worked.
I'll give you a few pictures that I should have shown you the last few weeks.

This is the female Short-tailed albatross on the nest (she's sitting by the bunch grass). She still doesn't have her full adult plumage yet (she's only about 8). They've been swapping out about every 2 weeks so far, but the male just showed up today (at only 11 days after his last shift).

This is the male. He's sleeping or has his head tucked most of the time so it's tough to get a good picture of him, . Plus, we keep about 150 ft away, so we don't disturb them. He's over 20 years old so he's got his adult coloring.

Here's a picture of the moon during the lunar eclipse on Dec 20. If you look at my old posts, I have a similar one from 2007. I would have put up a nice series, but I forgot to go outside until the moon was already orange.

We had a white elephant gift exchange on Christmas at the All Hands Club. The glass floats were popular and got stolen from people quite a bit. I ended up with a boxed wine. I can't compain about that. I just noticed something, the elves look a lot like our 3 volunteers and I never did see Santa and Darlene at the same time.....hmmmm???

We had a bingo night at Capt. Brooks on New Year's Eve. Yes, those are 4th of July decoration hanging from the ceiling.

Just an another albatross flying around at sunset. I hope I don't burn out my camera sensor by taking these pictures!

A Black-footed albatross is coming home, probably after a couple weeks of fine dining on caviar (flying fish eggs).