Sunday, May 6, 2012

Back to work

I'm back on Midway after a nice time off in the Washington D.C. area.  It's been raining most of the time since I've been back which has caused some flooding in the old parade field and some of the seeps.  Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon pulling out birds that were flooded.  A lot of them could get to high ground by themselves, but a lot of them couldn't, especially the little Bonin petrel chicks that got flooded out of their burrows. I didn't take too many photos this week since I've been in the office catching up on emails and paperwork, just some of the wet birds.

 A view of Waikiki from the plane on my way back to Midway.

 The parade field got flooded.  It hasn't flooded this bad in years.

This is the road going to the old hangar.

 A lot of the birds climbed to high ground, but some of them stayed at their nests.

A few of the birds were climbing on the other ones to get out of the water.

 A lot of the Bonin petrel chicks were floating at the burrow entrances.  There were a lot of drowned birds too.
 I scooped out a couple hundred chicks and put them on dry ground.  Most of them wouldn't have made it if I had left them in the water.  The parents should still be able to find the chicks.

 I also moved a hundred or so albatross chicks to higher ground.  They'll be able to walk back to their nests when the water goes down.

There were quite a few baby mice on plants.  The centipedes and beetles were up on the vegetation too so the ducks had some easy food.  I also saw a blind snake swimming by.  They are only about 6" long.

4 comments:

Laura Marie said...

Oh my goodness, everyone wasn't kidding, that's A LOT of rain!!

Seagull Steve said...

Wow....what a scene!

I hope the ducks were able to put a large dent in the 'pede population.

Peggy said...

Hi Pete! I was just remembering the Midway blog that I used to follow. I stopped following it when you moved away. Turns out that you came back! Wow! Nice to have some photos of albatross back in my life. I see that there are a few underwater photos too!

Pete Leary said...

Yep, it was wet. The ducks didn't eat too many of the centipedes, but plenty of roaches and other bugs.
Thanks for checking in again Peggy.