Short-tailed Albatross Egg

The Short-tailed albatross pair has another egg this year.  We only saw the female here for one day, and now the male is incubating the egg.  So, in just over 2 months, we may have another chick.  I hope the weather is a bit better this winter so this chick doesn't get washed around like the last little bird.

The lead paint workers took the last flight home.  They got shade cloth placed around the cable houses, the old marine barracks, and most of the old buildings near the power plant.  They won't be able to remediate the lead paint from those buildings for a few more months, but at least the chicks this year won't be able to ingest the lead paint chips on the ground around those buildings.

Our volunteers are leaving this week after a lot of great work for us.  We wouldn't be able to do much at all without their help.  We'll have 4 new volunteers for the next 3 months who'll be very busy with a lot of albatross banding.

This is the male short-tailed albatross with it's egg.  We can tell it's the male because the female doesns't have her full adult plumage yet.  When she does, it will be difficult to tell them apart.

The lead paint workers helped us finally finish the 3 guzzlers on Eastern Island, so this is the last of my guzzler building photos.  The ducks will probably start using them as soon as they fill up with rain.

The Black-footed albatrosses are waiting on the old runway on Eastern Island.  They don't want to push through the verbesina until they have to lay their eggs.

This is the view from my backyard.  We have quite a few Laysan albatrosses now.

On our way to snorkel, Eamon hopped into the water to save a Wedge-tailed shearwater that was waterlogged and couldn't fly.  We dropped it off back at the pier so it could dry off and try to fly again later.

The weather was nice enough to go snorkel outside the reef.  The water is deeper, so we see a lot of different fish than inside the atoll, but there isn't much nice coral out there, at least in this area.  This is Dani checking under a ledge for fish.

Here's a couple of Galapagos sharks checking us out.  There were 3 at one point.  They weren't aggressive and just wanted to see what we were up to, so we weren't worried about them.  Those are John Klavitter's feet in the photo.