Pete at Midway

Quiet again, not really

2012-01-29T18:34:00.000-11:00

Our visitors from Duke University left last night. They were a good group and helped out a lot with outplanting native plants and getting rid of non-native plants. They also helped out with marine debris pickup and Laysan duck surveys. Our regional office/Washington D.C. office visitors left on Monday, so it was a short, but good visit.

We had a medevac today also. We had to go pick up a person from a passing cargo ship. The US Coast Guard will be picking that person up tonight.

I'll be going back to Honolulu for the next couple of weeks to attend the Pacific Seabird Group meeting on Oahu. I'm not sure if I'll do a blog or not from there. I guess that depends on if I find anything interesting to talk about, or if I get enough Midway photos before I leave.

A Black-footed albatross chick is working its way out of the egg.

Here's a chick that's a little older. The Black-footed chicks are usually whiter than the Laysan albatross chicks.

I tried to get another photo of the Short-tailed albatross chick, but the mom never got up.

Here's one of our indoor soccer games in the gym.

There have been a lot of turtles on Turtle Beach lately. This day there were 48 of them out basking. There were a few nets that had washed up on the beach and the Duke students took one of their mornings to do a big cleanup there.

The Duke students also got to see the spinner dolphins.

Another spinner dolphin pic. I hope you aren't getting tired of them yet.

A few brown boobies are hanging out on a buoy as the cargo ship passes by.

The swells were a bit big out there today.

The waves were smashing the old water barge that is grounded near the channel. It's been getting beat up for decades, but is still there.

Short-tailed albatross Chick

2012-01-23T00:20:00.001-11:00

You may have already heard, or maybe not, but our Short-tailed albatross egg hatched and we have a new chick. This is the only known breeding pair outside of Japan. And if you remember, last years chick was washed away from its nesting area twice, once by storm surge and once by the tsunami. It survived and flew off. I hope this chick doesn't have to go through that too. It hatched last week, on Jan 12, so if all goes well, it should be out of here in July.

Here's a (long) link to the press release:

http://us.vocuspr.com/Newsroom/Query.aspx?SiteName=FWS&Entity=PRAsset&SF_PRAsset_PRAssetID_EQ=129333&XSL=PressRelease&Cache=True

Here's a link to a couple of my photos on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/6721781737/in/set-72157628789649819

We've got a couple other groups here right now too. We have a group of USFWS people from the regional office and a few from the D.C. office. They are only here for a couple of days, but it's important that the people who make decisions for us out here, to have been here.

We also have a group from Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. They come out here as part of a class to learn about marine conservation biology. This is the 5th year that they've been here, so as I've done in the past, I'll link to their blog: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/hawaii/2012/

I highly suggest reading their entries. They take turns writing the blog and they write a lot more than I do.

This is the female Short-tailed albatross on the chick the day after it hatched.

The male came back a few days later to take his turn incubating the chick. The parents will continue to trade incubation stints for a few more weeks before they both leave and go out foraging.

We had a nice little shindig at the All Hands Club tonight. The band played for the Duke Students and our other visitors. It was a good time as usual.

The team ping pong was getting pretty crazy tonight.

A Laysan albatross takes off.

This is a sailfin tang from my snorkel trip last week. There's also a spectacled parrotfish in the background.

More Wyland/Sylvia Earle Photos

2012-01-14T22:44:00.002-11:00

It took quite a few hours to go through all the photos I took this week. I usually don't like to post so much, otherwise you have to sit at your computer too long, but it was an interesting week. If you get really bored, you're allowed to quit before the end. It was great getting a chance to talk with Dr. Sylvia Earle. She's an inspiring person who's done a lot in her life. Look her up if you haven't heard of her before. Aside from conservation issues, we talked a bit about submarines, but she gets to go exploring on the fun kind (the kind with windows). It was also fun to spend some time with Wyland and get his artist's perspective on things. They did a press conference with Honolulu TV if you'd like to watch it:

http://www.kitv.com/news/30201407/detail.html

(good, but they gave Andy Collins from NOAA credit for my photo)

I'll quit with the text right now, since I put up so many pics.

This is the same shot of Charlie Barracks that I posted a few days ago.

Here's a better view of the lower albatross.

Wyland got the monk seal outline and general coloring done in about 10 minutes. I took this photo about 3 minutes after he started.

Wyland is just finishing up the seal.

Sylvia likes algae, so Wyland painted some really big algae under the turtles, since they like to eat that. He used Susan Middleton's Archipelago book for an example. Here's a photo break from painting with Michelle Jones (works for the State of Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife), Sylvia Earle, Wyland, and Susan Middleton.

Wyland sits on the bench outside of Charlie Barracks deciding what to paint.

Sylvia is ready to dive.

After I took the group out diving, I took them to Reef Hotel for snorkeling. Wyland had a really nice underwater camera and lighting system. I'm sure he has a better picture of me than I have of him.

I wish I was a little closer, but Wyland is getting a decent shot of a turtle swimming by.

I wish I was a little farther away. It's really difficult to get a perfect underwater shot. I guess I could just tell you that I was trying for a closeup of the front half of a surge wrasse.

This is Amanda Meyer. She's the manager of Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. She's also the Dive Safety Officer so she came out to assist with the SCUBA. You can barely see Sylvia in the background taking a photo of Amanda.

The Chugach Band played on Saturday night. Susan M., John Hannah, and Sylvia E. had a good time.

It's kind of a tradition for groups that are here to sign ceiling tiles for the All Hands Club. This is the one that Wyland and Sylvia Earle made.

I took Sylvia, Amanda, and Susan to see the Short-tailed albatross on Sand Island. As we were watching, it chased this Black-footed albatross off its nest and stole its egg. It's kind of a bully sometimes and has done this before. It loses interest in the nest after a while and goes away. If the Black-footed albatross hangs around long enough, it can have its egg back. Amanda saw this one back on the egg when she went jogging later in the evening.

I really liked how gold this one came out (without any photoshop work). I showed up a little early for the dive boat last Saturday, so I got some sunrise photos. Double click the pictures for a bit larger size.

Dr. Sylvia Earle/Wyland Visit

2012-01-12T22:47:00.000-11:00

You can usually tell when I've had a busy week, because I skip my blog. It's been fun though. This week we had a visit from the artist, Wyland, whom most of you probably know from his marine paintings on buildings all over the world. Dr. Sylvia Earle also came to Midway. She has a very long resume, but she is one of the premier ocean explorers of the last century and was a major influence on the creation of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. I had a good time snorkeling, driving the dive boat, and showing them around. Here is a link to an article about their visit on the USFWS Midway Atoll NWR website:

http://www.fws.gov/midway/whatsnew.html

If you want to find out more about Wyland, here is his website:

http://wyland.com/

And if you want to find out more about Dr. Sylvia Earle, here's a link to one of her sites with a nice slideshow of their visit:

http://blog.sylviaearlealliance.org/

Here is a link to a few more photos on Flickr, some that I took, most that others took.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157628789649819/with/6668259253/

I'll write a bit more on Sunday, but here's a few photos for now.

This is the wall of Charlie Barracks before the painting began.

This is the finished product. Wyland didn't do his usual undersea scene because he wanted to highlight just a few animals (and algae under the turtle).

Here are Wyland and Sylvia Earle about to go on their first dive together. I'll show some more photos of their visit on my next entry, but here's a few other photos I took this week.

This is a large Hawaiian spiny lobster under an overhang. We found a spot with about 5 or 6 of them hiding in the holes.

This is a Hawaiian green lionfish. I used to see them a lot at French Frigate Shoals, but the only other one I saw at Midway was in the duck seep after the tsunami.

Dan celebrates a strike at Sunday night bowling.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T23:27:00.000-11:00

Happy New Year! It's been an eventful year out here, as usual, but I'm not going to recap, since you can just scroll down the page and do that anyway. I was planning on starting out the year with a snorkel trip, but it was a bit too windy and a little gray today, so it was just a nice day off. We swapped out a few of the albatross counters on the plane, and Dasha's vacation time was up, so she left on the last flight, too. I hope it won't be too long before I can get back to D.C. to visit. We also got 5 new Thai employees on the island. Three of them will be helping out with the verbesina removal on Eastern Island, so it's nice to have them here. They've got their work cut out for them.

We also did a Christmas Bird Count for the Audubon Society. They do the count annually all across the mainland to get an idea of what birds are around. It's nice that some of our albatross counters took their only day off from counting albatrosses to count all of the other species of birds on the island.

Here's our Christmas tree complete with gifts underneath for our gift exchange on Christmas Eve.

Here's Santa and his elves. They look an awful lot like Dan, Richard, Nik, and Darlene.

One of my few artistic photos. This is A2 playing the harmonica with the band, and a bit of messing with the camera zoom and a slow shutter speed.

Dasha finally got to see the dolphins here at Midway on her fourth visit. She took this photo on our way back from Eastern Island since I was driving the boat.

Another shot of the spinner dolphins following us back to the harbor.

Just another sunset.

We finally got out to put Dasha's kayak training into use. It was kind of windy, so we used the 2 seater so we could paddle into the wind a little easier.

This is a tagged Bristle-thighed curlew. A group of them was tagged at their breeding grounds in Alaska. This is the only one we've seen on Midway that's marked.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T11:03:00.000-11:00

Sorry I skipped the blog last week. We had a weekend visit by the Director of the Fish & Wildlife Service as well as some visitors from the State of Hawaii and climate change experts. We also got our annual flight of volunteers to count all of the albatross nests. They're keeping very busy with somewhere around a half a million nests to count. My wife, Dasha, also came to visit for a couple of weeks and is helping with the bird banding, greenhouse work, and whatever else needs doing. She's not getting much of a vacation, but at least she's out of the lab for a couple weeks.

I've got a bunch of photos this time so I'll put the rest of the text in the captions. I won't do another blog tomorrow, but should be able to get one in next Sunday.

This is the Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Dan Ashe, stepping around albatrosses while getting a tour of Eastern Island.

We also took the group out snorkeling. This is a spectacled parrotfish and a saddle wrasse in the foreground.

The albatross nest counters are counting nests on Eastern Island. They stretch out in a row and walk a line to make sure they get all of the nests.

The albatross counters also help with other things around the island when they can. They spotted this net floating in the water and helped me take it away.

The Short-tailed albatross on the nest is looking particularly shiny this year. His head is much more gold this year.

Here's a zoomed and cropped photo so you can see his coloring a bit better.

The volunteers, Dasha, and the new Physician's Assistant are getting kayak training in the harbor. The weather wasn't the greatest, but now they can take the kayaks out on nicer days.

This is an uncommon bird around here. This is a brant goose. They breed in Alaska and northern Canada in summer and migrate down the Pacific coast for winter. If this one can find enough food, it'll probably stay around until April or May before flying back up to the breeding grounds.

The dolphins have been near the mouth of the harbor a lot in the past few weeks, so I've been getting a couple of decent photos of them lately.

The hydroponics garden is looking really good these days!

A Laysan duck splashes around to wash itself.

We had a marine debris ornament making party at Capt. Brooks a couple of days ago. The albatross counters are painting some floats. We'll have a gift exchange tonight at the All Hands Club, and a nice big Christmas dinner at the Clipper House tomorrow.

Darlene's snowman looks like it should be a character in "Nightmare Before Christmas". And it's not actually holding the glass of wine.

This is one of Dasha's float ornaments.

This was my ornament this year. I may have made another one too but the blue paint took a long time to dry.

Pearl Harbor, Kahana, Eclipse, etc.

2011-12-11T18:03:00.000-11:00

There was a lot happening this week on Midway. The island Thai population had a holiday on Monday for the Thai King's Birthday, Wednesday was Pearl Harbor Day and our supply ship, the Kahana, came in, we started our major albatross banding season, a lunar eclipse, a nice snorkel on a beautiful day on Saturday, and topped it off with a boat ride today with the dolphins around again.

Most people don't know that Dec. 7, 1941 was an eventful day for Midway as well as Pearl Harbor. Midway was attacked by Japanese ships on that day. It was nowhere near the scale of the Pearl Harbor attack or the Battle of Midway 6 months later, but 2 Japanese ships shelled Midway. First Lieutenant George Cannon was also killed that day, and became the first U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor in WWII. The story is in one of the photos below.

I've got more photos than usual, so I'll write more in the captions below.

This is the George H. Cannon Memorial in front of the building where he was mortally wounded. He was the first U.S. Marine to recieve the Medal of Honor in World War II. His story is engraved in the granite block below the U.S. flag and the U.S. Marine Corps flag (basically the same short story as in the next photo).

I left this photo at a little higher quality so you can double click on it and read a short summary of the attack on Midway and the George Cannon story.

We had the U.S. flag and the U.S. Navy flag at the Navy Memorial at half staff for Pearl Harbor Day.

I got up early for the lunar eclipse. It was cloudy for a lot of it, but it cleared up about 3:30 a.m. and I got a couple of photos. The moon is just starting to come out of the total eclipse in this photo.

The Kahana is bringing us more supplies. It is still outside of the atoll in this photo.

Ann and Karen band a Black-footed albatross. Most of the time we can put a band on them while they sit on the nest without having to pick them up. We use a bucket lid to keep them from seeing the banding and from biting anything.

We brought our lunches over to Eastern Island so we didn't have to drive the boat back and forth. Here's Ann, Nik, Karen, and an albatross.

The spinner dolphins came by to escort the boat on our way over to Eastern Island.

We decided to have a family style dinner at Capt. Brooks tavern. We just carried our food over from the Clipper House. I won't introduce everyone around the table, but people who've been around recentlt may recognize a few faces.

Here are a few convict tangs looking for food. The water was really clear yesterday. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and by ordinary I mean the usual amazing fish and coral.

Here are some nice reef fish from yesterday. This (clockwise from the bright yellow one) is an oval butterflyfish, female spectacled parrotfish, ring tail surgeonfish, ornate butterflyfish, and a Hawaiian hogfish.

Here are two photos I took a couple of hours ago by putting my camera underwater from the boat. I just randomly snapped the photos underwater. I got about 6 or 7 decent ones out of 174.

Wisdom

2011-12-04T16:12:00.000-11:00

Our oldest known albatross is back this week. "Wisdom" was banded in 1956 as a nesting adult and was estimated to be at least 5 years old at the time, so we say that she'll turn 61 this season. She still looks exactly like all of the other birds. We can't find any way to tell her apart from the young Laysan albatrosses. Most of the Black-footed albatrosses have laid their eggs now, and the Laysan albatrosses are still laying them.

People around here are getting pretty chilly. It was 64 this morning. It has also been mostly windy and rainy for the last week, so normal winter weather is here.

If you haven't checked out Chris Jordan's Journey to midway page recently, it's worth looking at again. He and his crew have posted a new video clip called, MIDWAY IV – A dream of a dying Albatross. It's really well done. Here's the site: http://www.midwayjourney.com/

This is Wisdom on her egg. It's only a couple of yards from her spot last year. You can see there's a Bonin petrel burrow in the lower right corner of the photo that goes right under her nest. The ground should be stable enough to hold the nest.

Most of the island population got out to say goodbye to John Hanna, the retiring DBSI (formerly Chugach) manager. Don't pay any attention to that giant shadow right in the middle of the pic, ok?

The female Short-tailed albatross is taking her turn on the nest surrounded by Laysan and Black-footed albatross.

Anne and Karen are collecting beach trash in our Eastern Island marine debris plot that we check monthly.

This is Brackish Pond. Which is a brackish water pond (hence the name) made by the Navy for non-potable water. Those ironwood trees all died from the storm and tsunami washover, which bathed the trees in salt water for a couple of months.

The Thai King's birthday is tomorrow (Dec. 5), so it will be a holiday for the Thai workers. Here's part of the holiday display that was put up in the Clipper House.

Thanksgiving and a Retirement Party

2011-11-27T17:14:00.000-11:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal on Thursday. The cooking staff did a great job on the food and presentation. We also had another retirement party here last night. John Hanna, the island manager for DBSI (our contractor, Defense Based Services, Inc., formerly known as Chugach Industries) retired after being on island for about 8 years. Have a great retirement, John!
Our new volunteers are learning the ropes, and they seem to be enjoying their work so far. They don't have too many albatross bites yet, but they'll be getting more as soon as they have to start banding them.

Here's the Thanksgiving fruit table with a bunch of hibiscus flowers that grow around the island to add some color.

Here's the bread table, most was homemade by Laurel and really good.

Here's the head chef, Pong, carving the turkey.

For the big holidays, the tables at the Clipper House get pushed together, which is kind of nice once in a while.

Here's John and his wife Mali listening to Darlene's speech at the All Hands Club. The presentations were followed by a pool tournament and karaoke. Normally the band would play, but the lead guitar player is on vacation.

The volunteers are marking a Black-footed albatross nest near the south beach.

Here's a female Ring-necked duck swimming around in one of the seeps.

This is the Laysan/Black-footed albatross hybrid that hangs out across from the Midway House.

New Volunteers

2011-11-20T14:18:00.000-11:00

Most of our albatrosses are back now. They have started laying their eggs too, so we're back to the usual Midway commotion. We've got a new set of volunteers in this week. Anthony, Dani, and Eamon have gone, and Karen, Dan, Ann, and Nik are here for the winter. They'll be busy with a lot of albatross work, compared to the last group that had a lot of habitat and duck work.

The male short-tailed albatross is still incubating the egg, so no new news with that. Our weather is cooling down for the winter, still nice compared to most of you, but temps in the 60's are cool for us. There's not much else to update you with so here are a few pics.

The albatrosses are filling the yards across the street from my house.

This is Greg spraying the verbesina on Spit Island. We also planted some native plants over there (for those who are interested; Pritchardia remota, Chenopodium Oahuense, and Sida fallax), since there are no mice and a lot fewer plant pests.

A Black-footed albatross flies by.

Thanks for the help Anthony, Dani, and Eamon. They decorated a ceiling tile from the All Hands Club to commemorate their stay.

I didn't take a lot of photos this week, so I'll show you some I took a few weeks ago. This is in the hangar at the airport, and was painted back when Aloha airlines still flew out here. We don't use this building anymore, except to keep a few things dry.

There is still some ropework art on the wall.

Another painting on the in the hallway of the hangar.

Short-tailed Albatross Egg

2011-11-14T07:43:00.000-11:00

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.

Red-tailed Tropicbird Visitor

2011-11-06T12:51:00.000-11:00

We had an interesting visitor on the plane this week. A red-tailed tropicbird was sent to us from Los Angeles. It got picked up on a Korean cargo ship and was brought to an International Bird Rescue center, and after disease testing and USFWS approval, it was flown to Midway to be released. Here's a short news story about it.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Tropical-Bird-Flies-Commercial-to-Midway-Atoll-133174903.html

A lot of our lead paint remediation workers went home yesterday. They do most of their work when the albatrosses are off island, so since the birds are coming back, it's time to go. Here's the photos for the rest of the goings on this week.

John Klavitter prepares to release the tropicbird from the cargo ship. It was released in the water and flew right away.

The male short-tailed albatross came back to its nesting site, and is patiently waiting for the female. Our remote camera is working so we can monitor for the female from this island.

John is leading a group through the verbesina on Eastern Island. We received a large five-year grant from NFWF (National Fish and Wildlife Foundation) to get rid of the verbesena on that island. This group was here to evaluate the problem and make recommendations.

Here's a green sea turtle resting on the beach.

Eamon, Dani, Anthony, and Greg are installing the roof over the guzzler (duck pool) on Eastern Island.

The sooty terns are harassing a Northern harrier. At the moment, I think we have about 4 birds of prey at Midway. 2 Northern harriers, a short-eared owl, and a peregrine falcon.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T20:47:00.000-11:00

We have a few more black-footed albatrosses are hanging around, and 2 Laysan albatrosses just showed up today. We are just about done with all of our projects that have to be done before the birds come back en masse. Speaking of that, our lead paint remediation project is going well. The workers will be able to work for only about 2 more weeks before there are too many albatrosses around.

You may have also heard that a lot of the tsunami debris from Japan is making its way toward Midway and may be here sometime this winter. There are a lot of articles about it, but here's a link to a good one: http://news.discovery.com/earth/tsunami-debris-floating-fast-towards-hawaii-111025.html

This was the only Black-footed albatross I saw on Eastern Island last week.

This is one of the early Laysan albatrosses.

I strung some new cable to our remote cameras on Eastern Island. This camera monitors the ducks at the Monument seep.

Anthony, Leann, and Anette are weeding the Short-tailed albatross plot so we can put the decoys in.

We haven't seen the Short-tailed albatrosses yet this season, but the decoys are freshly painted and enough of the verbesina is gone to allow easy access for the birds.

Clyde and Lynn from NOAA came out to do some work on the tide station. They gave a tour of their gear and a short presentation. I learned a couple of new things.

As I posted last week, Sak is leaving the island after almost 29 years. This is the line of people saying goodbye to him.

We had a Halloween party last night at Capt Brooks' Tavern.

Patty got rid of some expired light sticks for her costume.

Lead Paint Work & Retirement Party

2011-10-23T21:50:00.000-11:00

We should be seeing the albatrosses coming back any day now. I think I forgot to mention it, but the first Black-footed albatross was seen over a week ago, but didn't stick around long enough for anyone to get photos. I'm guessing that some will be back by next blog.

The lead paint work is going along well. The buildings are being treated and the ground is being covered by shade cloth so that the albatrosses won't nest in those areas with the most lead paint. That should save a lot of chicks from dying of lead poisoning.

We also had a retirement party last night for Sak Phosri. He has worked on Midway for almost 29 years. We've never heard of anyone else being here for that long anytime in Midway's history. We'll lose a lot of island knowledge when he leaves.

This is the old machine shop. The shade cloth will keep the birds from nesting here while the work is going on.

Remediation of the old torpedo building (or parachute building) is almost complete.

A lot of people wonder where we get our drinking water. Well, this is it. This is our rain catchment area next to the runway. The ducks like it a lot.

This is some nice marine debris artwork made by Susan Scott in Honolulu. She writes a weekly column for the Honolulu Star Advertiser as well. The birds are all old cigarette lighters and the blue and green areas are small plastic pieces that washed up or that albatrosses brought back to feed to their chicks.

This is the other "Lighter art" piece that Susan donated. Thanks, Susan!

We had a full house at the All Hands Club for Sak's retirement party.

Here's the guest of honor, in the dark shirt, as well as Toy, Kamwang, Prajim, and Anthony.

Someone had a lifesize photo of Sak made for everyone to take photos with. The golf bag, which everyone signed, was a retirement gift from the island. The cutout will stay on Midway, but Sak will take the golf bag.

Duck Bands and Kahana

2011-10-16T21:48:00.000-11:00

The Kahana showed up this week and brought some supplies for the lead paint remediation. The plane also brought 16 people up for that project and they'll be here for 5 weeks. They are a good bunch of guys and seem like they're liking Midway so far. The Chugach band played last night at the All Hands Club, but had to quit early due to electrical problems. It's been a while since they played since a few of the band members were off island for a while.

Michelle and Chris have been catching a lot of ducks and replacing or putting on new bands. We've already been spotting the new ones in the field and they are much easier to read.

People have been seeing a Northern harrier (formerly known as a Marsh hawk) around the island. It's apparently really easy to spot because there's normally a big flock of white terns or noddies harassing it. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll try to get a photo of it for positive ID. I hope it leaves before it eats too many birds.

We've been getting a lot of rain this week, and it's not quite as warm. But it's still beautiful.

This duck has a new band. You can see the 9 pretty easily.

The Kahana brought fuel and the lead paint supplies. And stayed about 2 days.

The white tern chick in my yard finally left yesterday. It's been able to fly for over a month, but hung around anyway. It's a nice bird, so I hope it comes back to visit now and then.

We did a sunset duck survey over on Eastern Island last night. The sunset wasn't the most colorful, but it was nice watching it on the really smooth boat ride back to Sand Island, which you can see on the horizon of this picture.

A Day Late

2011-10-10T22:03:00.001-11:00

I decided to wait a day for my blog, since I wanted to get a few more photos and it was a holiday.

This week we have some new people on island. We have some archeologists here to look around some of our buildings that are going to have lead paint remediation around them. Since lead paint has been peeling off of buildings since they put the cable houses here in 1903, they'll have to remediate a lot of the soil around those buildings. The archeologists are just making sure that historical artifacts are preserved before the work is done.

Michelle and Chris with the USGS, came to band the Laysan ducks. Many of the bands put on a few years ago, aren't readable anymore. Hopefully, they'll change out most of those old ones and band a lot of our younger ducks so we can get a better idea of our duck health and population.

Other than that, it's been hot for October. It made digging the well on Eastern Island a bit more difficult, but since I'm not out in the field all day, I kind of like it that way.

Here's the Gulfstream IIB bringing our mail (and people and supplies).

This is one of the cable houses that the archeologists are digging around. I don't think they've found too much interesting stuff yet.

This Laysan duck was standing just outside the garage on Friday, so I took some photos of his band. This band actually started out green with white letters. Now, it's just white. I hope Michelle finds him again to reband him.

We went back to finish the well on Eastern Island. We didn't get it as deep as we wanted, because the sand kept caving in, but hopefully it's deep enough.

Done! (Except for putting in the pump, running the hose, putting up the solar panels, and all that.)

This big plastic thing will be a little duck pond. We'll have a rain catching roof above it to keep it full of water. These "guzzlers" are a lot less likely to have botulism problems. We'll be using the new well to fill that big tank behind.

I was out riding around today and saw some White-tailed tropicbirds flying around the orchard. We only have a few of these around and the only way I notice them, apart from all of the other thousands of white birds that fly around, is to hear them. They sound almost like a Red-tailed tropicbird, but different enough to notice.

They are really pretty birds. They nest in the ironwood trees, unlike the red-tailed tropicbirds, that nest on the ground.

Nice Week

2011-10-02T17:39:00.001-11:00

It was a beautiful week. I spent most of the week catching up on emails and finding out what went on while I was gone. The volunteers have been busy with the duck surveys, pulling weeds and planting some native plants around the island. The albatrosses won't be back for a couple more weeks, so we're still trying to do projects that are easier when you don't have over a million birds around.

Since it was a beautiful day yesterday, we went out to Reef Hotel for a snorkel trip. The dolphins came and played around the boat for a bit. So it was another usual day.

John and Eamon are digging a freshwater well on Eastern Island. We'll use the water for the verbesina removal project that we'll have going on there for the next 4 years. We dug all afternoon, and although we got to the water pretty quickly, we have to go a lot deeper to make the solar pump effective.

We had a crew out here for many months painting these water tanks by the runway. They couldn't work on rainy or windy days, so it took a long time.

I didn't get a lot of great snorkeling pictures yesterday, but it was nice water and there were quite a few fish around. This is an Oval butterflyfish and a Spectacled Parrotfish.

Here's another Spectacled parrotfish. The fish make a lot of noise when they chomp on the coral. You can hear it very well underwater. These fish are also responsible for making a lot of the sand in the atoll by crushing up the coral that they eat.

This Laysan duck got its head stuck in a plastic ring from a bottlecap a while back. This happens quite a few times a year. We caught this one and got the ring off.

Finally Back Again

2011-09-25T21:06:00.000-11:00

Ok, I think that was my last vacation for the year. It wasn't much of a vacation in Virginia. I had to help Dasha move from our apartment to a house and just in time for Hurricane Irene. It wasn't too bad in Alexandria, but our power went out, and the sump pump didn't work so we had to scoop out hundreds of gallons of water from the basement by hand. Luckily, the power came back on just as it was about to overflow onto the floor. At least I had a great vacation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I've included a few photos from there too.

A lot has been going on here while I was gone. The Kahana brought our supplies and the US Coast Guard ship Kukui came to do some work here and at Kure Atoll. We also had a Coast Guard C-130 come about an hour after our plane came to pick up some of the Coast Guard personnel and a construction crew from Kure. I've made it through a few hundred emails already and should be caught up in only another week or two, so if anyone reading this is expecting a reply from me, I'll probably be getting to it soon. Alright, time for some photos.

I got to ride out on the new airplane. Our flight contractor got a G-IIB. It's almost the same as the last plane, but a little more headroom and the seating setup is a bit better.

This plane flies a lot higher than the old G-I. You can barely see French Frigate Shoals in this picture. It's fairly small from 45,000 feet. You can see that the atmosphere is pretty thin up there too. You can maybe see it a bit better if you double click on the photo.

This is part of Pearl & Hermes Atoll. The reef pattern is pretty cool. We didn't see Laysan or Lisianski this time, but we did see Nihoa, FFS, Gardner Pinnacles, and P&H. I didn't get clear photos of Nihoa and Gardner due to the double windows on the plane.

There isn't much to see here, but this is Sand Island at Midway as we are getting ready to land. It is pretty small, isn't it?

Now for some vacation photos. Of course, I took a couple thousand, so here are just a few representative shots.

These mountains are called the High Tatras in northern Slovakia. We spent a week there.

The hiking was wonderful. It was really surprising how many people were up there, but I can see why because it is really beautiful.

The mountain in the background is called Lomnicky stit. It looks a lot higher than 8,643 ft (2634 m), but the level of the surrounding land is not as high as it is in the Rocky Mountains. There is a little gondola lift to the top.

This is my brother-in-law, Tomas, taking a photo from the overlook on top of Lomnicky stit. It's a pretty long drop from there. It was clear down below, but there were some clouds up there the day we went. It snowed up there 4 days later.

This was our hotel for the week, the Grand Hotel Praha.

This was the view from our hotel room.

One interesting thing about the Czech Republic is how many of the hilltops have castles on them. This castle is called Hazmburg.

I'm not sure of the story behind these castle ruins, but it was probably nice five or six hundred years ago.

This is the old town square in Dasha's hometown of Teplice. There are some hot springs here that were said to be discovered in 762 A.D. Beethoven worked on some of his symphonies here while getting treatment in the spa.

I of course had to go check out a soccer game in Teplice. The stadium may look familiar if you saw the last "Pink Panther" movie. I sat in the hooligan section for the first half, but moved for a better seat in the second half. When you go with the rough crowd, you have to stand the whole time, and it's not quite the same when you don't understand the Czech taunts.

New Volunteers

2011-08-21T22:12:00.000-11:00

We lost our extra volunteers this week. They went back to Honolulu on Thursday along with two of our long term volunteers, David and Eryn. They got a lot of native plants planted and weeds pulled. We did get a new group in and it was nice of Amelia to stay to help train Anthony, Eamon, and Dani. They've had to learn quickly about botulism and Laysan ducks. We've had a few sick ones this week.

I'll be flying out on the next plane, and coming back 3 1/2 weeks later. I've had a lot of leave time to burn up this year thanks to spending 9 1/2 months on Tern Island last year. I'll try to do a blog when I get back, or maybe I can do an entry while I'm in the Czech Republic.

Tyler and Nikki are cutting back some of the naupaka in front of the FWS office.

There is a lot of grounding wire all over Eastern Island. This brown noddy and chick don't seem to mind.

I haven't had a sunset picture for a while, and the colors were nice the other evening, so here is one.

The water was pretty cloudy out near the reef last week. You can barely see the monk seal in this picture.

If I mess with the brightness and contrast, you can see it a little better.

The water was a lot clearer 2 weeks ago when I took this picture of some teardrop butterflyfish, threadfin butterflyfish, a moorish idol, a saddle wrasse, and a female spectacled parrotfish.

2011-08-14T21:22:00.000-11:00

We had another ship this week. The NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" came through on their way to pick up the monk seal crews from the other islands. They usually stay over night to give the crew a break, but this time they were only here for the day on Friday. A few of the people from the ship are flying out on our next plane, so they will help us out on the island until Thursday. Julia, Nicky, Naomi, and Ilana were on Kure Atoll. Nicky was a volunteer here a few months ago, so it's nice to have her back for a few days. Irene and Tyler were the turtle techs at French Frigate Shoals this summer. They counted and marked over 800 nesting females this year which was the most ever recorded since they started the program a few decades ago. I worked with Irene a couple of years ago, so I think I may have a photo or two of her on my Tern Island blog.

I went out snorkeling again today, with our new visitors. We were going to take the boat out, but the weather wasn't so great, so we just went out from shore. There isn't much coral at all, but there are still some good fish to see. My photos from last week are better so I'll show you those, instead of the not so great ones I got today.

Our new helpers are waving goodbye to the Sette. This is Naomi, Tyler, Irene, Ilana, and Nicky.

Irene, Tyler, David, and Greg are planting bunchgrass near the cargo pier with the Sette in the background.

Amelia, Eryn, and David are collecting some short-tailed albatross decoys that we'll be cleaning up.

Here are some of last weeks pictures. Derek and Kristin are picking up some net and rope stuck on some coral. Derek is working on a water tank painting project on island.

This is a Blackside hawkfish in some nice purple coral.

This is a Blackspot sergeant and a Surge wrasse.

This is a little closer view of the surge wrasse. They are a bit more colorful than the photo shows.

This is Kristin swimming above some nice coral.

Hi'ialakai

2011-08-07T22:27:00.001-11:00

We had some visitors this weekend. The NOAA ship Hi'ialakai was in the neighborhood doing coral reef studies, so they pulled up to the pier Friday and left today. It was nice to have them here and hear what they are working on.

We had a couple more sick Laysan ducks with botulism this week. But we got them all fixed up and back out in the field.

I don't have a lot more to tell you this week since I spent most of the time in the office. Don't feel too sorry for me, because I at least got out snorkeling today and got a few pictures (Thanks for the camera loan, Kristin!)

The Hi'ialakai brought beautiful weather with them when the pulled up to the cargo pier.

Here are two of our volunteers, Amelia and Eryn, pulling out weeds near the Parade Field seep so we can locate sick or dead Laysan ducks.

This white tern is waiting to feed this fish to its chick.

Now for some snorkeling pictures. This is the reef on the east side of the atoll. There is some really nice coral over there.

This is the emergent reef on the east side. This looks volcanic, but is actually just long dead coral. A few of the albatross chicks take a rest on the reef before they fly off for a few years.

I got a lot of good pictures with Kristin's camera today, but I'll just show you some of the butterflyfish that we have around here. This is an ornate butterflyfish.

This is a threadfin Butterflyfish. You can see the "threadfin" near the black spot above the caudal fin (tail).

These are teardrop butterflyfish. There were a lot of them around, but I hadn't seen them at Midway before.

Here's an oval butterflyfish, with some convict tangs in the back. Both of these species are fairly common around here.

These are milletseed butterflyfish. I saw some other species of butterflyfish, but didn't get great pictures of them. Next week I'll show a few more random underwater shots.

Another Medevac

2011-07-31T14:32:00.000-11:00

Aside from the normal things going on this week, we also had a medical evacuation. Someone needed to be evacuated from a container ship that was passing by. We've also had a few more Laysan ducks become sick from botulism. So far we've been able to cure them all with antitoxin and food. We have to check for sick and dead ducks daily, since botulism can spread through maggots from an infected carcass.
It's the quiet season around here now, until the albatrosses come back in October. It's quite a bit easier to get around the island now that the birds aren't blocking the roads. The birds are great, but it's nice to have a little break. Just like with the seasons, you appreciate the summer a bit more after the winter.

We're pulling away from the ship after picking up the patient. It was a bit rough, but at least they had steps for the person to get down to our boat.

Our fancy state of the art ambulance.

There are few enough birds around now that the planes can land in the daytime. The Coast Guard was nice enough to bring us a few supplies when they came.

The heat waves coming off of the runway give a kind of cool effect on the photo. You'll have to double click on the picture to make it bigger to see that.

The brown noddy chicks are starting to hatch.

Here's a convex crab I found out on the beach. These usually aren't out on land.

This Laysan albatross climbed up on a pile of marine debris. Maybe it's climbing out of the verbesina to try to catch the wind.

This is the parade field now. There are only a couple of albatrosses out there.

This was from almost the same spot back in April.

Links

2011-07-24T22:02:00.001-11:00

This week we did a little bit of good. The volunteers did a great job of getting rid of a lot of invasive plants, planting some native ones, finding two ducks sick with botulism (which we rehabilitated with antitoxin and food), and a few random other things.

I've got a few good links for you too. There's a great article about the tsunami, written by one of our vistitors that was here during the tsunami (Connie Toops). I had a photo of her digging out an albatross back in March, and she put a picture of me with an albatross that I had just dug out. Here's the link for the article in National Wildlife Magazine:

http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/birds/archives/2011/seabird-rescue-midway.aspx

Chris Jordan and his crew (Jim & Joe) are back on Midway working on their film about Midway and taking some photos. Chris is just back from Kenya after winning a prestigious photography award, the "Prix Pictet Commission", which sent him to Kenya to photograph sustainability issues in local Africa populations. They have a new trailer for the film at http://midwayfilm.com/ I wish I could see it, but our internet is way too slow out here. From the first 9 seconds of music I can hear, it sounds great! If you didn't check out their blog site before, that's worth a look too: http://www.midwayjourney.com/ And the last thing I'll mention is Chris' gallery page. This is a direct link to his Midway photos, but that is only a small part of his portfolio: http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24

The verbesina is going crazy on Eastern Isalnd after the tsunami spread the seeds around. It killed all of the live plants, but it looks like it also germinated the seeds.

A Laysan duck and her 4 ducklings are swimming in one of the seeps on Eastern Island.

This is another Laysan duck female with 2 ducklings on Eastern Island. The other one is a bit out of frame.

Here's a photo for those who like to see some of the historical things. This is the old gun emplacement next to the cemetery.

This is the cemetery. Most of the graves are for doctors who died on Midway. What I was told is that the doctors would normally be the ones who embalmed any bodies or those who died, but if the doctor died, no one was around to embalm them, so they were buried here. The gun emplacement in the previous photo is just in back of the shrubs behind the cemetery.

Another Blog to Check

2011-07-17T19:50:00.000-11:00

There was nothing big going on at Midway lately. Just the usual warm, sunny days. It's been a bit breezy, so a lot of the albatross chicks have fledged, but there are quite a few around. We've been doing are usual weekly checks of albatross plots, red-tailed tropicbird plots, and Laysan duck surveys. While I was over on Eastern Island, I found some pits that a female green sea turtle had dug. These didn't look like actual nests, but just pits to check out the sand. We've only had a few verified nests on Midway so we're always hoping to find more.

I forgot to mention that the coral reef researchers from UCSC (Univ. of California Santa Cruz) came out here while I was gone. Kristin and Anne have been coming out here every summer for a few years now. Kristin has been studying black-lipped pearl oysters. They aren't very comon around here, but she's finding a few. She also does a blog from here that you can check out for a slightly different Midway perspective. Here's the link and a link to their research, too:

http://midwaycoralreef.blogspot.com/

http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/potts/midway/

The sooty terns are still nesting over on Eastern Island and still flock around when people walk there.

Some of the sooty tern chicks are starting to get feathers. A lot of the birds are still on eggs.

This is the caterpillar of the white-lined sphinx moth feeding on the native Boerhavia repens.

This is the adult white-lined sphinx moth. Since the boerhavia is doing so well, there are a lot of these moths right now.

This is something I haven't seen before. An old white tern chick shading a tiny white tern chick. I hope that the big one doesn't steal the little one's food.

This is a frigatebird flying above a dead heliotrope tree.

Visitors

2011-07-10T20:10:00.001-11:00

It stopped raining for the most part and we've had some pretty nice days out here. It was a short week with the holiday and 3 days of HAZWOPER (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response) training for me. We also had a couple of visitors this week. We had an atmospheric research plane stop by to refuel and rest for a day, and we had a couple stop in who's sailboat got hit by lightning and had some fried electronics. Other than that, it was a normal week of watching the albatross chicks try to fly, counting Laysan ducks, getting rid of invasive plants, and planting native ones.

Here's the Bint Al Khaseem, who was passing by during a pretty high energy weather cell. The lightning fried some of their gear so they pulled in to make some repairs.

This is the G5 (our plane is a Gulfstream 2 (G2)) doing atmospheric research. It's nice that Midway has an airfield to support things like this.

Here's a canary on one of our hibiscus trees, on a nice healthy flower.

Here are the emerald beetles killing another hibiscus flower by going after the nectar at the base of the flower. The emerald beetles are a really bad fruit and flower pest that are very invasive so we are pretty careful to keep them out of Hawaii.

An endangered Hawaiian coot flew in from the main Hawaiian Islands most likely. It seems to be happy sitting in the ballfield seep.

This albatross chick has a pretty nice spot in the shade out on my back patio.

Back to Midway

2011-07-04T20:48:00.000-11:00

Happy 4th of July! It's been a while but I'm back from vacation. I had a nice break, but Ive got a lot of catching up to do. Things are as usual here, but a little rainy for this time of year. The albatrosses are fledging. As you saw from my last post, I missed a little bit of excitement with the short-tailed albatross fledging and the 747 emergency landing, so now I just have the usual excitement, like doing biology and holidays. We have a nice Hawaiian group out here that is collecting albatross feathers to make Kahilis (a royal Hawaiian staff that is covered in feathers, you can google it to see what they look like). They are collecting the feathers from dead birds since they need thousands of them. I didn't take too many pictures in the few days since I've been back, due to the rain, but here are a few.

Captain Brooks' Tavern is decorated for the 4th. We actually celebrated on the 2nd, since it was supposed to be the best weather.

A few people wanted to stay out under the tarp instead of coming inside. ????????

A white tern chick hatched in my backyard on Friday.

Here are a few pictures of the young albatrosses getting ready to fledge.

I'll probably get a few more pics before they are all gone (in another month or so).

Vacation Update

2011-06-23T12:00:00.000-11:00

There's been a couple of things to happen since last post. So I'll just mention them quick. I'm not on island, so I don't have many details, but here are a couple of interesting stories you can read. The first one is a news story about the Delta 747 heading for Japan that had to make an emergency landing on Midway a few days ago. Here's a link: http://www.kitv.com/r/28277670/detail.html

Also, the short_tailed albatross chick fledged! Here's the link for that story:
http://www.fws.gov/refuges/news/TheFlightAlbatross_06212011.html

I hope it shows up in a few years and makes Midway its home.

Vacation

2011-06-17T12:08:00.000-11:00

Ok, I'm on vacation now in the Washington D.C. area, but since I said I'd do a post from here, here it is.

Right before I left, one of the last tour groups of the season came to Midway. The leader of that Oceanic Society group is Susan Middleton. I'm mentioning that because she came through the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a few years ago and took some really amazing photos. She put out a book called "Archipelago" and I would really suggest that you check out her site; http://www.susanmiddleton.com/Susan_Middleton/Galleries/Pages/Archipelago.html

I've been doing a bit of volunteer work around here while I've been back. I've been helping Dasha with her work with the Animal Rescue League, which is an organization that rescues injured wildlife. I've also been helping out with the Fairfax County Tree Stewards, so it's almost like being at work!

I don't have a lot to report about Midway. There wasn't a big anniversary for the Battle of Midway this year. Maybe next year. While I was gone, the Short-tailed albatross chick was banded, and it should be fledged by the time I get back. I'll be back in about 2 weeks and will get you up to date then.

This is the cover of Susan Middleton and David Littschwager's book. Go to that link above to see pics.

Here's the airport crew seeing us off at the G-2.

This isn't from Midway by the way. We don't have any ospreys or bullheads. I took this on the Potomac River in Alexandria, VA near our apartment.

We don't have any peacocks either. This was at the National Zoo. I've got a lot more pics, but you want to know about Midway, not D.C. right?

Almost Vacation Time

2011-05-15T18:41:00.000-11:00

I got over to Eastern Island and checked on the short-tailed albatross chick this week. It still looks like it's doing alright. It will have to be banded soon. We don't want to lose track of that one. The weather is getting warmer so more of the other albatross chicks are starting to die from starvation or dehydration. I still haven't got any Laysan duckling photos, as I said before though, I like to leave them alone. There isn't much big news out here again this week, but it is the last week for this group of volunteers. We'll be getting a new trio of volunteers on the Thursday flight. That is also the flight that I'm leaving on. I'll be heading back to Alexandria, VA to visit Dasha (my wife), but I'll do one more blog from there next week most likely. I'm not sure if anyone on island will be doing any type of blog for you to get your Midway info. Every once in a while a volunteer will start one. I'll let you know if anyone does.

This is the latest photo of the short-tailed albatross chick on Eastern Island.

This photo was taken a few weeks ago by Joe Van Os. He led a couple of groups for Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris. If you'd like to read his trip report or see a slideshow of some of his photos, you can check out: http://www.photosafaris.com/blog/2011/midway-atoll-2011-trip-report-by-joe-van-os/

The vegetation is coming back on Eastern Island. This was all bare sand a month ago.

A white tern found a dead naupaka bush to rest on. Well, I guess it's not quite dead because you can see a few leaves sprouting out of the branch.

I'm showing a few more of the old buildings lately. This is the old machine shop.

Here are a bunch of circular saw blades that I decided to try to get creative photos with.

Here's one of the shots. I zoomed in as I snapped this one. I won't bore you with all 240 pictures I took of these sawblades.

It looks like this albatross is contemplating whether or not this sign pertains to it. It says "AREA BEYOND THIS SIGN CLOSED All Public Entry Prohibited".

Another quiet Week

2011-05-08T15:47:00.001-11:00

This week was another beautiful and fairly quiet week. No extra ships, boats, or planes. We got the last seep cleaned out over on Eastern Island. The volunteers banded the last of the Black-footed albatross chicks, but there are still a few small Laysan albatross chicks to band. There are a couple of monk seal pups around. I don't have any photos of them since I don't want to bother them. It was nice on Tern Island when we had them right outside of our window. The first Laysan ducklings were also seen walking around near the houses this week. So although there is a lot going on with all the birds nesting, there isn't a whole lot to report on this week. Here are some pics.

The mud at Sunset seep is cleaned out now. The tsunami caused our freshwater to become salty enough to keep the fish that were washed into the seep alive. We got some surprising fish out of this seep including a Hawaiian lionfish, threadfin butterflyfish, barred knifejaw, Hawaiian flagtails, yellowfin goatfish and a Steindachner's moray eel. They were all returned to the ocean. If you want to see what some of those fish look like, check out Keoki Stender's website: http://www.marinelifephotography.com/ He's got great photos.

Penny and Dennis band a black-footed albatross chick.

This wandering tattler is just about to get splashed.

These are the old Marine Barracks near the airport. They haven't been used for quite a few years, but at least they aren't falling in yet.

This is an old bunker behind the Marine barracks. There are only two of this type of bunkers on the island. There is a big room on each side of the middle of this tunnel.

This green sea turtle was swimming by in the harbor.

Beautiful Weather

2011-05-01T23:26:00.001-11:00

It was a beautiful week. Nice and sunny but cool. This week we did a little extra duck work. We are trying to get a good population estimate after the tsunami and botulism outbreaks, so we are looking at a lot of duck bands that can be fairly difficult to read. We also cleaned the second of the three seeps over on Eastern Island. Only one more seep to go. The volunteers are just about done banding the albatross chicks too.

This is Rolondo seep. We pumped out the water, then scooped out the muck in the bottom.

The chicks like to sit in the road. You have to drive carefully because they won't move for vehicles.

This albatross wanted my shoe untied for some reason.

This duck has a pretty good band. It says WE. This was one of the original ducks brought from Laysan.

This is the snorkel spot we went to a week or so ago. It's called Reef Hotel. There are a couple of deep cuts in the coral nearby where a lot of big fish hang out.

It doesn't look like much from above. Reef Hotel was a spot where there was a pier with a little building. It was used to perform drilling operations to find out how deep the original rock of the island is.

This is a stripebelly puffer that was at Reef Hotel.

This boat was used for tours back when there was a major visitor program here. It hasn't been used for years and is now in our boneyard with the other out of commission equipment.

I'll try to show you more building pictures. This is the power plant. We don't use the generators that are in the building anymore. They were too big for our island population. The new ones are in the white storage containers that you see.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T21:58:00.000-11:00

I was finally able to catch up on a little work this week. No ships or major weather events. We had a group of photographers here again, but they really just like to go take pictures and don't need a lot from me. It's been nice and sunny and a bit cool. That's good for the albatross chicks because they won't dehydrate so quickly. We also got a chance to go look for nets on the reef and picked up a couple of small net peices. It was beautiful. The water is finally starting to warm up, and was nice and clear. I forgot to add a fish picture before I started typing my text, and this blog program is difficult with a slow connection, so I'll just have to put up a pic next week. Alright, I'll keep it short this week and give you some pictures.

I had a request to show the cross on the eastern end of Sand Island. I'm not sure when the last time that there were actually Easter services here. Here is what the plaque says:

I showed you a picture of 3 people cleaning the Monument Seep a couple of weeks ago and not getting done. We brought back some reinforcements and finished the job.

We pumped out all of the water and scooped out pretty much all of the muck to reduce the anaerobic conditions in which bacteria that produce avian botulism like.

A Laysan albatross feeds its chick some squid (and probably a little plastic too).

The chicks in the old parade field are doing pretty well.

The Short-tailed albatross chick is getting its adult feathers.

I saw the dolphins again today when I was coming back from Eastern Island today.

One of our canaries sits on a twig. No story, just a nice yellow bird.

Happy Songkran

2011-04-18T20:28:00.000-11:00

Another slow internet day yesterday, so I'm a day late with the blog. Our new Refuge Manager, Sue Schulmeister, came out to Midway last week. It will be nice to have the extra person out here. The person out doing the monk seal surveys found a couple of interesting things over on Eastern Island. She found a small turtle buried in the sand on the beach. Only its head and the tip of one flipper was out of the sand. She thought it was dead, but dug it out anyway. It actually was alive, and swam away. It could have been there since the tsunami, or it could have been washed over later, but either way, it was probably there for a while and was good that she happened along. Another thing she found was a bucket that was labelled "Laysan Island". It was actually washed away from the camp on Laysan during the tsunami and washed up on the beach here about a month later. Laysan is around 500 miles away, so it got here pretty quickly. The Laysan seal crew had brought millet out for food, and it looks none the worse for wear. I also found a message in a bottle on the beach (the second one I've found on Midway). I opened it at a gathering we had one night, and let me just say, if you are planning on putting a message in a bottle, make sure it's sealed well, because paper doesn't last long in salt water. Metal screwcaps don't seal that well so we could only make out a word or two, but it was written on Hawaii Outrigger Hotel stationery.

Last week we also celebrated Songkran, the Thai New Year. Cleansing with water is part of the tradition, which means a lot of water balloons, squirt guns, and buckets. At least it was a beautiful, sunny day, so a great day for a beach BBQ.

This is a recent photo of Eastern Island. It's really easy to tell exactly where the tsunami water stopped. The salt water killed most of the plants.

Here's John Klavitter giving a bike tour of the tsunami damage to our new manager, our head of Refuges for USFWS, and some visitors from Hawaii.

The tour also included the hydroponics garden, which has some good cherry tomatoes ripening.

Here's one of the more recent pics of the Short-tailed albatross chick. We haven't seen the parents yet, but the chick is still doing fine.

I came across a masked booby nest over on Eastern Island too.

Another interesting bird was this Laysan, Black-footed albatross hybrid. I've never seen this guy (or girl) before.

This was the Songkran parade from the Chugach office up to Captain Brooks.

Captain Brooks Tavern was decorated nicely.

Here's one of the Songkran sand sculptures. There was also a nice turtle and seal, but I can only show so many pictures.

John is getting a good hit on the ball.

3 Ships

2011-04-10T22:12:00.000-11:00

Another exciting week as usual. We've had 3 ships come this week. The Robert C. Seamans is a Woods Hole Research vessel that does a semester at sea program where people learn to sail while learning oceanography, biology, or whatever the focus of the course is. They visited us out on Tern Island last year with a University of Hawaii group. The next ship that showed up was the Kahana, bringing us a load of fuel and will take back some of our waste. The NOAA ship Oscar Elton Sette also stopped by. They are putting out teams on most of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to monitor the Hawaiian monk seals. That's along with the photography visitor group, the NOAA marine debris crew, a group waiting to take the Sette to Kure Atoll, and a team working on removing some contaminants from the island. I'm sure I'm leaving out some good stuff, but that's good for this week.

This is the Robert C. Seamans. A 134 ft. brigantine rigged ship. The weather has been cloudy lately, otherwise I would have had a better photo. There's a better one on my Tern Island blog, let me just say, it's much nicer having piers than having to run small boats out to these ships.

Here's another shot of the Kahana.

The Oscar Elton Sette is back for the first time this season.

Dennis, Penny, and Joanna are cleaning out the Monument seep on Eastern Island. We pumped the water out and scooped out a lot of the muck that harbors bacteria that produces botulism toxin. We didn't quite finish up, but at least we got rid of the anaerobic conditions that the bacteria likes. It fills back up with groundwater pretty quickly.

Another dangerous sinkhole opened up near the seawall due to the waves crashing over. I had to get 6 birds out of there. We'll get it covered up this week.

I told you last week that I moved into my new (old) house. It was recently renovated. There are still no blinds on the windows, but it's not bad.

This is a Laysan albatross chick. They are getting big. I was going to show you a picture of the Short-tailed albatross chick that I took today, but this blog program is acting goofy. It's something for you to look forward to next week, I guess.

Getting Back to Normal

2011-04-03T18:40:00.005-11:00

Things were about back to normal around here. Normal being great, interesting, and busy. I moved out of Charlie barracks and into a house. A group of our contractors that were working on renovations to the old officer housing left. Four NOAA employees came to help pick up derelict fishing gear from the reef and shoreline. The NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" will come soon to take all of that away from here as well as all of the other islands in the NW Hawaiian Islands. I'll put in another plug for Chris Jordan and his group. They are doing really good work out here and I'm sure their film will be great from their shots so far. It's been really intersting watching them work. I've been picking up a lot of good photo tips from them. As you've likely noticed, I write a lot more about the things that go on around here every week, and they do a lot more descriptive writing, poetry, and artistic photography to give you the feel of Midway. http://www.midwayjourney.com/ and Emily's latest post at http://emilysmidwayjourney.blogspot.com/ One of Chris's crew was here before on the team of another movie called "Bag it". We watched it last night up at Capt. Brooks. It's a good documentary on plastic use. John Klavitter (our deputy refuge manager and former wildlife biologist) and Matt Brown (former manager here) are both in it. The weather was a bit windy last week. We were going to go over to Eastern Island to clean out the duck seeps to try to prevent another botulism outbreak in the Laysan ducks. When we get a chance, we'll pump all of the water out, scoop out the mud/muck at the bottom and let it refill from the freshwater lens in the island. Alright, enough writing for this week. Life goes on. The parade field birds don't seem to know that there was a tsunami.

I don't know if the NOAA marine debris collecting group will have a chance to get any of these nets and ropes that washed up into the middle of Eastern Island. At least they are less of a hazard to marine animals up in the middle of the island, but they can still be a bit of a hazard for birds getting entangled.

This is one of the few Bonin petrel chicks left on Eastern. There weren't that many to begin with over there. There is a lot more hard packed ground over there.

This young Great frigatebird probably didnt' die in the tsunami. Since the tree is still there. It either didn't get enough food or got entangled.

This whale spine washed up on North Beach a few weeks ago. It's about 7 ft long. The skull was found nearby a couple of days later. I haven't had a chance to identify it yet, but I will one of these days.

I'll end with another white tern.

Getting back to Normal

2011-03-27T19:37:00.005-11:00

As most of you probably heard already, our (approximately) 60 year old Laysan albatross, Wisdom, has been seen coming back to feed her chick. She actually showed up the same day as her mate, so the chick got a big meal that day. At least the suspense ended with a good outcome. We still have not seen the short-tailed albatross parents, but they don't stay long to feed anyway. The chick seems to be doing well, so it seems that it's still getting fed. We've got a visiting photography group out here right now led by environmental photographer Chris Jordan. Rather than tell you about them myself, I would highly suggest checking out their blog, Flickr pictures, You Tube videos, and facebook page. They are filming a movie out here as well as taking photos. So please look at these pages: http://www.midwayjourney.com/ Other links are on this page. Really good vids and photos on all pages. http://emilysmidwayjourney.blogspot.com/ This site is done by a high school student that came along. She has an interesting story. The islands are finally drying out. We've been seeing a lot of albatross chicks dying off. Even though they made it through the tsunami, they may have been injured, stressed, or not found by their parents. We are seeing a lot of new plant sprouts coming up in the devastated areas. Hopefully they are mostly natives. Nesting season is ramping up for Red-tailed tropic birds and white terns, and the sooty terns and gray-backed terns are starting to return. The first Hawaiian monk seal pup of the season was also born a little over a week ago. So the life is returning. We had a Coast Guard C-130 stay for a day this past week. We also got a visit from our supply ship, the Kahana again. Wisdom preens her chick.

The short-tailed albatross chick is huge now and waits to be fed.

Between past posts on this blog and my Tern Island blog, you've seen the Kahana a lot. So here's a slightly different angle.

The USCG C-130 lands about an hour after sunset to minimize interaction with birds.

Jan, Jim, and Victoria are getting some shots for the Midway film on Bulky Dump.

While they were out there, they found two adult albatrosses that fell into a sinkhole. It was produced when the water washed the sand down into the voids of the dumped materials. Quite a few were formed and we try to fill them or at least make a ramp for the birds to climb out. I had to crawl in head first to get this one out.

I found this red-tailed tropic bird on Cargo Beach. I don't know if it was a tsunami injury, but it wasn't doing well. I put it in the shade under a naupaka bush, at least giving it a chance.

This is what most of the washed over west half of Eastern Island looks like. There's not much vegetation left.

This is taken from the top of one of the old airplane revetments looking to the eastern part of Eastern Island. There's a lot of life where the tsunami didn't wash over (too bad it's mostly invasive mustard).

Bad sunlight angle, but there's one chick in the middle of the picture surrounded by adults. This is the only chick in this whole area visible in the picture.

Many of the chicks are sitting on the dead birds. This Laysan albatross chick is sitting on a dead black-footed albatross adult.

This Laysan albatross chick was in the surf and found his way back up the beach.

The parrotfish don't look quite so intimidating when they are alive.

Our seabird biologist from Honolulu, Beth Flint, is inspecting the damage on Eastern Island. Quite a few of the bottles have been turned into little terrariums.

The great frigatebirds are ready for mating season.

Here's the same bird.

At least the dead tournefortia trees are still useful nesting sites.

Thanks Everyone

2011-03-20T15:56:00.007-11:00

Wow, thanks for all of the support to everyone who commented. I'm glad that so many people were interested in what happened out here. It's very nice to hear.

The big question as of late seems to be "Is Wisdom ok?" If anyone doesn't know, Wisdom is now recogized as the oldest wild bird in the U.S. at least 60 years old (she was banded as a breeding adult in 1956). There's no reason to think she's not ok, since her nest was not in an area that was affected by the tsunami. If she was at her nest, she would have been ok, and if she was feeding, she would most likely have been flying out in open ocean. I'll let you know when we spot her though.

I have been putting up some of my pictures on the USFWS Flickr site. Many of them are here on my blog, but I posted a few more there. There are also some photos of Laysan Island, and a map that I made of the flooded areas of the islands on Midway. It's worth looking at it (it's the last of the 50 pictures).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157626265154692/with/5537779135/

There is also an official news release at:

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/ It is under the Recent News Releases toward the bottom.

We had another couple of days of finding more buried birds. And we did some more cleanup of the Monument seep on Eastern Island. We sometimes have problems with botulism outbreaks in the endangered Laysan ducks. Decaying proteins (i.e. dead birds, fish, and vegetative debris) can give the botulism bacteria great growing conditions, so it was important to get that out.

Aside from a visitor's group from the Oceanic Society, we also got the crews from Laysan Island and Kure Atoll. They were all a big help with seep cleanup and habitat restoration. The NOAA ship Hi'ialakai was kind enough to evacuate the island crews to Midway. They will put new crews on those islands soon.

Thank you all again!

This seal found its way into a washed up net on the boat ramp. Luckily, it wasn't stuck too bad yet and we could quickly pull the net back over its head. It went right back to sleep after we removed the net.

I finally found this chick after 6 days. It was still alive, and still pretty snappy.

This Black-footed albatross only had one wing stuck for days. The 2 Laysan albatross in the photo only had their heads uncovered. Albatrosses can sit on their nests for weeks without going for food, so as long as they aren't too stressed, there is a possibility that they can survive.

One of our visitors, Connie, is freeing a buried Laysan albatross. Most of the birds are biting while we dig them out, making it a bit more difficult. I've got about 20 separate cuts from them on my hand. They usually quit biting as soon as we pull them out.

You can see the NOAA ship Hi'ialakai in the background as their SAFEboat brings in the 5 people from Kure Atoll.

Enough of the depressing pictures. There is still a lot of life here, and our facilities are all still intact. For instance, here's Captain Brooks Tavern.

The white terns seemed to be mostly unaffected since they usually sit in trees or on raised objects. I have better white tern pics on my older posts.

This picture is really cool at full resolution, but it lost a bit when I shrunk it down. Since I went through the work, I'll post it. This green sea turtle was eating floating vegetation in the harbor.

Midway Tsunami Pictures

2011-03-12T23:39:00.007-11:00

Here's some pictures from the tsunami. It's late here, so I'll write the text when I get up tomorrow. Thanks for your comments everyone! It's great to see that so many of you are thinking of us out here.
OK, here's the text:

It's been a long couple of days here on Midway. Starting out with the preparation for the tsunami, on Thursday night. We moved most of the vehicles, heavy equipment, and our big safeboat up to Radar Hill, which is our highest area here. After that, we all evacuated to the 3rd floor of "Charlie Barracks" where we waited to see if anything happened. This is the first time I'm glad I wasn't able to move into my house yet, since I am currently living on the 3rd floor already. We had all 67 island employees/visitors up here watching the news on BBC and watching our tide gauge data over the internet. We saw that we had about a 5 foot rise in the tide gauge level, but were glad that we couldn't see any water when we looked out the windows.

After looking at a bit of the washover on Sand Island, and setting a crew to work on digging albatross chicks and petrels out of the debris, Greg and I took the boat over to Eastern Island. On the way, we passed thousands of albatross adults and petrels that had been washed into the water and lost their ability to stay dry. Their feathers were messed up by being tumbled over the island and through the vegetation. We pulled some into the boat, but needed to get to Eastern Island, so we had to hope that most of them would paddle to shore.

Eastern Island was mostly washed over, so 10's of thousands of chicks were washed away. I'll have to look at our count numbers from Dec. to figure out how many chicks were in the affected areas. There were dead fish by the hundreds up in the middle of the island. The short-tailed albatross chick must really be wondering what kind of place it lives in because it was washed away from the nest for the second time this year already. This time, it was about 40 yards away from the original nest. It was easy to spot because all the other chicks were washed away in a previous storm. I didn't want to pick the chick up, because it was already stressed and upset, but the parents may not have found it that far from the nest. I put out a sheet of plastic and when it stepped onto it, I gave it a sled ride the 40 yards back to its nest. I hope that's all the excitement that it has for the rest of the season.

There were a lot of chicks and adults buried in debris (mostly dead vegetation). Greg and I were digging out stuck birds all day. We took our volunteers and some people from the visitors group over yesterday and dug out another hundred or so birds. We also found 2 turtles that were washed quite a way up onto the island, which were then carried back to the beach and seemed glad to get back in the water. At least we didn't find any injured Hawaiian monk seals or Laysan ducks. The seals were back resting on the beaches on Friday.

Although we lost a lot of wildlife, all of the people who are here because of the wildlife are safe.

The 3rd floor of Charlie Barracks wasn't the most comfortable place for 67 people. But it was safe.

The boat dock in the harbor has finally seen its last days.

Water washed pretty high near the cargo pier, and hopefully this little Laysan albatross chick will get fed and be able to preen that mud off.

A piece of the pier on Eastern Island washed up onto the gun.

Two of the visitors brought one of the turtles back to the beach on Eastern Island. Thanks Anna and Connie.

This was the biggest fish that I saw washed up on the beach. It is an Ulua (Giant trevally) that is about 3 ft long. There were at least 15 different species of fish on the island.

Here is where the short-tailed albatross chick ended up. It's a tough little bird.

The chicks and adults got washed up into big piles of dead vegetion.

There's no way to know how many bonin petrels were trapped in their burrows. We saved this one, since its head was still sticking out.

There are two Laysan albatross chicks and one adult stuck in this pile. We got them all out.

I could have taken hundreds more of these pictures, but I wanted to concentrate on digging them out.

All of these chicks would have been washed into the harbor had the naupaka bushes not been there to seine them out.

The debris formed a little island in the lagoon. Too bad the birds couldn't climb up on much.

One red-footed booby found something to stand on. The rest of the birds will have to swim for shore.

These 2 have about given up. We pulled them into the boat and put them on Eastern Island. It'll take a couple of days to dry out though.

Here are 5 Laysan albatrosses and one Bonin petrel that we brought to Eastern.

Midway Tsunami

2011-03-11T16:34:00.004-11:00

Just a quick word. Everyone here is ok. We had some washover on the runway and the airport was closed for a bit. Eastern island got about 60% washed over. I'll post some pictures tomorrow, unless I'm still digging out buried birds, then maybe Sunday. And the short-tailed albatross chick is ok for now.

Time Off

2011-02-07T11:13:00.003-11:00

We didn't have any visitors this week (except Barry Christenson, the former Midway Manager from a few years ago). There's still a lot of interest in the Short-tailed albatross chick. It's getting big fast. We've had pretty cool, breezy weather lately too. It's even been in the 50's. I know a lot of you on the mainland wouldn't mind that about now.

We also got a new flight contractor. I got to leave on their first flight out. I'm on vacation now in Alexandria, VA right now, so I won't be doing a blog until I get back the first week in March. I'm keeping it short this week, since I was only on Midway for 4 days. Here's some pictures.

Here's the female short-tailed albatross on the chick. It shouldn't be too much longer until the parents leave it alone to go on more foraging trips.

Our new G2 is pretty nice. It's fast too. No more 6 hour flights in the G1.

The Laysan albatross chicks are getting big too. Some of the black-footed albatross are being left alone already.

Another flying albatross.

There were 35 turtles basking on Turtle Beach this weekend.

I went and checked out some of the areas that got flooded in the big storm. All of the white dots are eggs that got washed out of the nests.

Here's a view of the old seaplane hangar. It still looks ok, but the storm did blow off some of the wall panels on the back. It still doing ok after being bombed in WWII.

Another Medevac

2011-01-30T20:34:00.004-11:00

We had another medevac this week. That's already 3 since I've been here in two months. It's a good thing that Midway is here for all the people who get sick or injured in the middle of the ocean.

The group from Duke left last night, so it'll be kind of quiet around here for a month or so until the next group of visitors get here. If you haven't checked out their blog yet, look at the link in my post from last week. There's not a lot of other news around here, other than our short-tailed albatross chick is getting pretty big now. I don't have any pictures of it this week, but we've been using our remote camera to check up on it. No more big storms, but it has been cool and windy. Most people here have been calling it cold, but for someone who grew up in North Dakota, low 60's don't count as cold.

I built up a lot of vacation time on Tern Island so I'll be going on vacation next week for a month or so. I'll post a blog for next week though.

This is the fishing boat that dropped off the medevac patient.

Here's a Black-footed albatross and its chick.

Here's a pretty young Laysan albatross chick.

This chick was getting fed by both parents.

Sorry for the over exposure. The Duke students and volunteers were out filling sinkholes that formed when parts of the island got washed over during the big storm.

No story with this picture. It's just the old Harbor Office.

This picture is a few weeks old, but this is Sara, Nicole, Emily and Dasha, reading the bands in our albatross plots. This is about a 7 week project, to see how many of our adult albatrosses come back each year to breed.

The canaries like this tree, so do the mynah birds. It is a Tiger's claw or Coral tree.

Visitors

2011-01-23T22:09:00.003-11:00

This week wasn't quite as busy as last week, but there was still plenty going on. There's been a lot of press about our short-tailed albatross chick, so I've been answering a lot of questions and trying to supply some better pictures. You can click on the Flickr link I put up last week to see a couple more photos. The Laysan and Black-footed albatross chicks are hatching everywhere now too. We've had a lot more wind and more trees are falling, but it seems to be getting a little nicer.
A new visitor group came in on Thursday. Students from the Nicholas School for the Environment at Duke University are here for a visit. They've been coming here for a few years now and as usual, are posting a daily blog. Here's the link: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/hawaii/
The students take turns with the entries and they do a great job, so check it out.

Here's a picture of the short-tailed albatross chick. This picture is only a few days old and the chick is already about twice as big as this.

Here's one of the new Laysan albatross chicks. I'll put up a black-footed alb. picture next week.

I took this photo of the spinner dolphins from the harbor wall today.

The Duke group got a tour of Eastern Island today. This monument has 3 plaques that discuss the importance of Eastern Island during WWII, that's where the runway was during the battles.

The Chugach Band played at the All Hands Club last night so there was some dancing going on.

The shuffleboard table is in good shape at the All Hands Club.

This is Dan and our current volunteers, Nikki, Emily, and Sarah at the gun on Eastern Island. Dan was the acting refuge manager for the last month, but he left on the last plane.

Never a dull moment!!!!!

2011-01-17T09:22:00.006-11:00

Now I remember why I did a daily blog a few years ago. Too much goes on around here! Our short-tailed albatross chick hatched. This is the first time that a chick has been known to hatch outside of Japan. You may have already read about that in the newspaper. A few more pictures are on USFWS' Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157625522391142/with/5364606872/

The chick is hard to see in these pictures, but I sat and waited for a few hours and this is the best I could get.

Our first Black-footed albatrosses hatched this week also. I don't have any pictures of that since the weather has been awful the past week (and this week will be very windy too).

The Kahana brought our supplies and fuel. It was good to see the crew again. They are a great group.

We also had another medevac. This time someone needed to be evacuated from a freighter, shown here past the water barge. A Coast Guard C-130 came and picked up the patient and brought him back to Honolulu.

We've had 30-62 mph winds for the past week with very few breaks. Today, the winds are about 40 mph. The winds brought in some very large waves which washed rocks up onto the runway and flooded a large part of the island. This picture is actually a field, not the ocean. Many albatross nests were washed away, but most of the adults should be ok and can try again next season. The only plus is that this should kill a lot of invasive plants.

Quite a few trees were blown down. I'm sure we'll have a few more this week too.

We have to check the fallen branches for trapped birds. This one would be able to get in and out, but I broke the branches off so it can stretch its wings without ruining its feathers.

This was the pillbox on South beach a couple of weeks ago.

This is the pillbox now. It's been through a lot in the almost 70 years it has been here, but this storm was a little too much for it. It's not quite as photogenic anymore. I hope I won't have too many more pictures of this type of thing by the end of this week.

We took advantage of the one non-windy day to try to get short-tail pics on Eastern Island. The weather did a good job of piling up the plastic floats for us.

The spinner dolphins were having a good time following us back from Eastern Island.

Short-tails

2011-01-09T20:32:00.004-11:00

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).

Back At Midway

2011-01-02T19:24:00.007-11:00

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.

Tern Island Blog

2008-11-03T16:11:00.002-11:00

I finally started my Tern Island blog. If you are interested in Midway, stay on this blog, but for my new adventures on another Northwestern Hawaiian Island, go to:

http://ternisland.blogspot.com/

New Job

2008-07-01T09:13:00.005-11:00

Here's the update you've been waiting for. I got a new job. It might actually be blog worthy (I can maybe do one once a week or so because daily is way too much work). I've accepted a job at French Frigate shoals. It's also an atoll in the Hawaiian archipelago and is about 700 miles closer to Hawaii than Midway. There's a little island called Tern Island in the atoll. There is a very small runway there, but most of the traffic is by boat. Midway is a big city compared to Tern. There is only 4 to 10 people there at any given time. I will be a Refuge Specialist (Asst. Manager). I don't have a set start date yet, but when I get there I'll update the blog with new info.
Today I went to Case Western Reserve University where Dasha is teaching a group of high school kids about plastic. I brought some albatross boluses (undigested stomach contents) and the kids dissected them and measured the squid beaks, plastic, fishing line, etc. Yesterday I gave them a presentation about the wildlife on Midway and the plastic issues. She showed them the BBC footage also. I went with them while they did a debris pick-up on the beach at Lake Erie last week, so it was almost like being on Midway.

Back Home

2008-06-10T07:49:00.005-11:00

Well, after 1 year and over 57,000 pictures later, I'm back home. It was a wonderful experience in every aspect. The work was hard, but not stressful, the people were great, and the island and wildlife were amazing. I don't think I have to go into the details, because there's a couple hundred days of details on this blog. If you ever have a chance to get out there, do it!
I'm not sure what's next on my agenda, but I doubt it will be blog-worthy. I will leave this blog up for people searching for Midway, but probably won't add to it unless I start to do something that's worth writing about.
Thanks to all of you who have commented and kept reading. I still can be emailed through my profile. I'm not posting any new pictures today, just a few representative pics.

Green sea turtle underwater near the fuel pier.

Laysan albatross with chick.

Black-footed albatross with chick.

Old WWII Command Post.
One of the four cable houses.

Laysan albatross in flight.

Spinner Dolphin in the lagoon.

Native morning glory on the seawall with the fuel pier in the background.

Turtle Beach.

The WWII pillbox on South Beach.

Great frigatebirds fighting over a fish at sunset.

A Laysan Teal is stretches in the sun.

Red-footed boobies near South Beach.

Red-tailed tropic bird and chick.

White tern chick.

Look through the older posts for more details.

Last Day

2008-06-07T17:33:00.002-11:00

I'm too busy packing and getting ready to go to make a post. I'll write one up when I get back to Cleveland in 2 days, so check back then. Sorry!

One More Day

2008-06-07T01:26:00.004-11:00

Today I filled out my paperwork for leaving Midway. It was funny because I had to verify that I had turned in my transportation pass, parking pass, and keys, which was easy since I didn't have any of that. I still haven't finished packing, but what I can't fit in my bag will be sent, so I will still have time for my last snorkel trip in the morning.

My plane came in tonight and will stay until tomorrow night. There were quite a few familiar faces. One of the fire fighters that was here a couple years ago came back (Dave O.), one of the Nuclear Test Ban guys came back to work on his monitoring equipment (Bo), my timekeeper from Honolulu (Pat) who also brought me a very nice going away lei, and John H's wife Mali and grandaughter Angela (who flew out with me when I came out last June). I also got to meet Murray's girlfriend, Sarah, who has made a few blog comments lately. There were also a few other people on board who I will get to know a little better tomorrow. We were also supposed to have a medevac for another Japanese fisherman, but apparently he got better. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow, so goodnight.

I was a little too busy to take pictures today, so here's one of a white tern from a while ago.

I finally got a flying black-footed albatross picture that I like.

Eastern Island

2008-06-05T21:37:00.003-11:00

This morning Greg, Forest, Kim, and I went to Eastern Island to survey the plant situation over there. We found pretty much the plants we expected over there. This afternoon was an inside day. We went over some more plant information, too bad I didn't get all of this a year ago.
I've only got 2 days left on Midway. So I hope all of you daily blog readers will find something else that can keep you busy for 2 minutes a day.

Brown noddies are on an old ironwood stump.

I haven't put a picture of a frigatebird chick yet, so here it is with its mom.

Here's a Laysan albatross on the south side of Eastern Island.

The Battle of Midway Commemoration

2008-06-04T22:31:00.004-11:00

We had 109 visitors today to commemorate the Battle of Midway which was fought June 4-7, 1942. It was a nice ceremony and people had a great time even though they were only here for about 8 hours. We thought that we might have overnight visitors after an albatross went through the engine during landing, but after cleanup and inspection, they determined that there was no damage and the plane could leave. After the ceremony, the visitors had a walking tour of the major island sites such as the seaplane hangar, command post, cable houses, and memorials. They ended up getting some beach time and had some food and drinks at Capt. Brooks' Tavern. I'm glad I got to take part in this before I'm gone.

We had the ceremony under the hangar.

Our main speaker was Lieutenant Colonel H.C. (Hank) Stackpole, USMC (Ret.).

Chuck Wheeler was on the USS Enterprise during The Battle of Midway. He's pointing to his group.

A group is listenening to the story of George Cannon at the command post.

The Japanese Consul General came from Honolulu to honor the Japanese losses during the battle.

Some of the visitors are enjoying the beach just before sunset.

Spit Island

2008-06-03T22:24:00.004-11:00

Today we took Forest and Kim Starr over to Spit Island to look at the plants there. They couldnt believe how much the naupaka and heliotrope have taken over the island. They also were happy to see the popolo (solanum nelsonii) and sea purslane were doing so well. Greg and I pulled the verbesina that has sprouted since the last time (about 2 months ago).
Tomorrow is our big day so I'm going to quit writing and get to bed.

Forest and Kim are checking out one of the popolo plants.

A red-footed booby chick seeing what's going on from its nest in a heliotrope tree.

There were 9 seals on Spit Island today. Here are 5 of the seals. There are 2 mothers with pups and another seal resting nearby. You can see a dark speck on the beach on Eastern Island near the top of the picture that is another mom and pup pair.

Plant Work

2008-06-02T21:32:00.004-11:00

I had my last Monday morning meeting today. The new volunteers introduced themselves; Susie, Anne, and Dan are looking forward to helping out. Barbara came to coordinate the June 4th celebration. Forest and Kim Starr are out here to do a plant survey and tell us which plants need controlling immediately and which aren't that bad. This afternoon Greg and I took them around the island and asked them to identify a few plants that we wondered about. They had found a few plants that could become big problems that weren't here the last time they were out here in 1999. They were volunteers out here and did the plant surveys in their off time. They did a lot of work! They are also the only people I've met that have taken as many pictures as me. They have all their pictures (most of the plants all across the Hawaiian chain) on a website called hear.org (Hawaiian Ecosystems At Risk). I've been looking at their pictures to identify plants around here every couple of weeks since I've been here, so it's great to finally meet them.

This is one of our native plants, Sesuvium portulacastrum, or sea purslane (Akulikuli in Hawaii) out at Bulky Dump.

This albatross chick has lost all of its down and looks like it's ready to fledge already. It was out on Bulky Dump also.

It was a good day for getting flying albatross pictures today.

Boat Ride

2008-06-01T21:23:00.003-11:00

This afternoon we took a boat ride around the outside of the atoll. It was actually official business since the boat will be driven to Kure Atoll (about 60 miles away) next month and we had to figure out how much gas it would use and how fast it would go with 5 people and gear. It took us an hour and 10 minutes to go 26 miles around the outside of the atoll, so it probably take about 2 1/2 hours to Kure, depending on the conditions. We saw quite a few birds and some flying fish, but mostly it was just a nice ride around the atoll.

This is the Safeboat that they'll take to Kure Atoll.

This is what Sand Island looks like from the north. It was pretty humid today so you can't see the island that well over the exposed reef.

This is from the south. The edge of the reef is a lot closer on this side of the island. This is the pillbox, old hangar, and water tower.

Beach Day

2008-06-01T00:29:00.009-11:00

Today was a beautiful day. The beach was pretty busy. There were 16 people there at once. Brent, Dana, and I were out swimming pretty far from the beach when the dolphins came by. We could hear them squeaking underwater before we could see them. They swam around us for about 10 minutes and then followed us for a little while we swam toward shore. It would have been nice to have a camera since they came within about 8 feet of us.

The Walnut took off today and the visitors left also. That's the last group until sometime after the birds come back. It'll be fairly quiet around here, but I'll be busy getting ready to leave. Just 1 week from tonight!

I'm going to miss this beach. It doesn't get much better than this.

The Walnut is on its way out with our marine debris.

Another Busy Day

2008-05-31T00:38:00.003-11:00

The Walnut came today and took most of our nets. They couldn't quite fit them all in the shipping container, so we've got a little pile left. They'll pick them up some other time I guess. This afternoon we did some more chainsawing and then had a BBQ at the Walnut. The island residents and even some of the visitors came out to have some food and drinks and meet the crew. It was a good time and we also got a tour. The plane came in tonight and 3 new volunteers came in for the summer, a few other people came in too so I'll meet them over the next few days.

Here's the Walnut. All of the Coast Guard buoy tenders are named after trees.

This was the scene at the BBQ.

Greg and I found this albatross about to drown in the harbor so we pulled it out. It probably won't make it, but at least it has a chance.

Busy Day

2008-05-29T19:15:00.003-11:00

It was a busy day today. We started out with a weed pull at the field where the Pan Am Hotel was. The visitors and volunteers came out and we got it all done. We then tried to get a big net off of the rocks by the fuel farm, but it was too heavy and it looks like we'll need some of the heavy equipment to pick it up. We wanted to get it out because a Coast Guard ship is coming in tomorrow morning to pick up all of our marine debris nets and ropes. The "Walnut", which is a buoy tender, is coming in for a day and will take the nets back to Honolulu.
And speaking of the Coast Guard, a medevac plane (C-130) is coming in tonight. A person was sick on a cargo ship and we went out and picked him up outside of the atoll a couple of hours ago. They'll take him to Honolulu tonight.
We also went through our big marine debris pile and separated out all of the ropes and lines, glass, metal, and plastic. It was sort of fun to go through all that junk and see what has washed up over the last 2 years.

The visitors are pulling the verbesina.

We needed the big telehandler forklift to sort through the net pile.

Here's me, Greg, Brent, and Dana.

This is the cargo ship waiting outside of the atoll for the Safeboat to get there. I took this picture next to the power plant looking south over the runway.

66th Preparation

2008-05-28T18:59:00.005-11:00

We are starting to get ready for the 66th aniversary of the Battle of Midway. We'll have a ceremony a week from today (Wednesday). There will be a Continental charter flight bringing out a bunch of people for the day. They will only be here about 8 hours, but it should be nice. I just missed it last year when they had about 2,000 people out here. A cruise ship pulled in as well as the flights. Greg and I have really been concentrating on spraying the town area to make it look good. We'll do a lot of hand pulling the weeds in the visible places too.

It was a perfect day today. I went for a swim at lunch and took this picture of Capt. Brooks' Tavern on the left and the Clipper House on the right.

A monk seal swam by just after I got out of the water.

Visitors

2008-05-27T21:44:00.004-11:00

The patanque tournament went until 11:00 last night. Willie and "E" won. Next time we'll have to start early in the morning.

Two of the visitors here now are sisters and attended school on Midway between 1976 and 1978 so it's been fun to talk to them. We have a yearbook from 1976 that has pictures of them in 3rd and 10th grades. They have some great stories and have a lot of information about where things were. They are really glad to be back and they said they have been reading my blog, which prepared them for things like the school being torn down. They are also disappointed that there aren't seashells all over North Beach like there were back then. They are happy they have the chance to bring their families to the place that they have such great memories of.

This white tern was sitting near the harbor waiting to feed its chick.

I left for about 30 minutes and found another tern (or maybe the same one) in the same spot with another meal for its chick. This is a little cuttlefish or squid.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T22:02:00.005-11:00

This morning we had a little Memorial Day ceremony at the Navy Memorial. Barry read a message from The President, Darlene read a poem she wrote, and we had a moment of silence. Bob and Pong made a beautiful wreath and some leis for for the George Cannon memorial.
At 1:00 we started a patanque (pronounced patak) tournement. It is pretty much the same as bocce ball. It's 10:15 and still going on. Dave (airport manager) and I were partners and got knocked out at 8:30 so it was a good activity for the day.

Here is the wreath at the Navy memorial made from plumeria, hibiscus, spider lillies, and even a couple of verbesina flowers and castor bean seeds.

This is the George Cannon memorial. As I've said before, he was the first Marine in WWII to be awarded the Medal of Honor. He was killed Dec. 7, 1941 when a bomb bounced off another roof and came through the window (I've heard it's the one on the left in the picture). The 4 ft. thick roof probably would have stopped the bomb, but it was a lucky shot.

Barry is looking for his next shot at patanque.

The game is still going on with work lights and golf carts.

Rainy Day

2008-05-25T19:55:00.003-11:00

A new group of visitors woke up to rain today. This is our last tourist group for this year. They will start again next year when the chicks hatch. I stayed in today and did some job search work. Greg and I also watched some old Midway home videos from 1973 and '74. A lot of things are different, but the birds are exactly the same.

I hope tomorrow gets nice since we will have a little Memorial Day commemoration over at the Navy Memorial. Since today was rainy, I'll give you some pictures from yesterday.

The spotted eagle rays are coming in to the shallow water for breeding. There were 13 of them in this group.

A brown noddy is sitting on some rocks in the ironwoods. They are ground nesters so it might be looking for a good spot to nest.

Message in a Bottle

2008-05-24T22:11:00.004-11:00

I found an old wine bottle in the harbor today with a note inside. I had a tough time fishing it out of the harbor, but finally got it out with a marind debris crate and some rope. I opened it up at Capt. Brooks' tonight, a lot of people were curious so they showed up too. It said it was part of a scientific ocean current study and it gives an address to send it to. My guess is that it's probably at least 15 years old, so I'll do a little internet research to see if the address is still good. I wish they would have put a date on it. At least they protected the note inside a ziplock bag in the bottle because the cork leaked. The bag had deteriorated and the note was still wet, but at least it was still readable. A lot of times, the notes are unreadable from leaky corks, I hear.

This is where I found the bottle.

Here's the soggy note. I'll let you know if I find anything out.

Ship

2008-05-23T23:42:00.003-11:00

The "Oscar Elton Sette" came in this afternoon. They dropped off some stuff for a NOAA scientiest who will be coming up later in the summer, and are taking John and Tammy off to their respective islands. There were also a couple of familiar faces on board. Jaime, one of the coral reefers that was here last year, and Angie who was out here doing seal work last year, were on board. It was fun to see them again. I took a tour of the ship after dinner and then a bunch of us sat out on the pier with the crew and chatted for a while. They'll be leaving at 7:00 tomorrow morning.

Here's Aaron checking out the ship.

Another Chainsaw Thursday

2008-05-22T18:58:00.004-11:00

This morning we did more spraying in the field behind the new fuel tanks. Last year that area was so thick that the tractor got stuck. It was very difficult for the birds to get in and out. It looks thick from afar, but we are keeping it open enough that we shouldn't have too many dead chicks. We also cut down quite a few more ironwoods, but there will still be enough after I leave to keep Greg and John busy.

A canary made a nest in our tool room. I hope no one needs jumper cables anytime soon.

Here's a view from Bulky Dump toward Frigate point along South Beach.

More Weed Pulling

2008-05-21T20:15:00.003-11:00

Today we got some help pulling verbesina from the field where the Pan Am Hotel was. All of the visitors came out to help, which was great considering they paid to come out here on vacation. I also had time to go mark some mowing hazards on the GPS at Bulky Dump. The verbesina is getting tall enough that it took Greg and I about 2o minutes to find one old well.

We are expecting a ship on Friday. The NOAA ship "Oscar Elton Sette" is stopping by to pick up John and Tammy, who have been helping us out and are now going to Laysan and Tern Islands, and will also drop off some supplies.

Here are the visitors and volunteers pulling the verbesina.

Here's a red-tailed tropic bird chick that was under one of the trees. It looks like it hatched yesterday or the day before.

Tuesday Night Football

2008-05-20T21:36:00.002-11:00

After a rainy day of pulling weeds, we watched a football game. Brent played football for Stanford and brought a DVD of a game they played last season. It was the game where Stanford beat #2 ranked USC when they were 41 point underdogs. It was called the second biggest upset in college football last year (Next to Appalachian State beating Michigan). We got to watch it with the commercials, time outs, and other stoppages taken out, and it still took about 2 hours. It was fun to watch.

Here is an old barracks building that isn't used anymore.
The ceiling is falling in on the pool table.
Here's a bird picture for the day. This is near the old fuel farm.

More Building Pics

2008-05-19T19:01:00.006-11:00

Today was a usual Monday. We started out with our Mon. morning meeting, followed by some chainsaw maintenance and office work. This afternoon, Greg and I did some spraying and more GPS work on invasive species.

One of our visitors was in the Marines and was stationed here in 1958 so it's been very interesting to talk to him. He can't believe how many weeds have grown here, since back then they either kept up the grounds or had buildings and cement everywhere. He also said his favorite snorkel spot was off of the south beach, which is closed for the seals now.

Here are pictures of the harbor buildings near the finger piers. This is the old harbor office.

This is a view of some of the junk that's left in this building. Most of the buildings have at least some junk, and some have a lot. Some of it is useful, but most isn't.

This building was where the old contractor had their scuba office. We just use it to store life jackets for the boats.

There still is a hyberbaric chamber in the back of that building. It needs some work but is probably fixable.

While I was taking the building pictures, I saw this frigate bird sunning itself on a branch.

Movie

2008-05-18T23:04:00.005-11:00

Again, it was a beautiful day. I didn't do much, but that's what weekends are for, I guess. Tonight, Murray and I are watching the movie "The Battle for Midway". It is a National Geographic movie, mostly about the search for the wreck of the aircraft carrier "Yorktown" by Robert Ballard. I've seen a lot of the battle footage before, so I enjoy seeing the differences in the island that have occurred since then.

Our old landing craft finally got put in the boneyard last week. There is no more money for maintaining it and it was getting unsafe to use it. Now we won't be able to take any heavy equipment over to Eastern Island anymore.

Here is a wildlife shot, since I didn't give one yesterday. Some of the red-tailed tropic bird chicks are becoming partially feathered now.

More Visitors

2008-05-17T22:13:00.004-11:00

It was another beautiful weekend day. I took a couple more pictures. I took the suggestion from the comments and took some building pictures. I'll spread them out a little though.
The visitor groups are back again. I think there are about 13 on this trip. There will only be one more group after this for this season. The FWS wanted to kind of start slow and make sure everything goes alright.

Here's the "Parachute Building". I guess this is where they used to hang parachutes to prepare them. Now we use it for the recycling center.

This is the old machine shop. This building has a serious lead paint problem. A few people came out a couple of months ago to see what it would take to clean it up. That's why there's one little painted section. Someone came out last week to train the Chugach guys on lead paint removal, so sooner or later we'll get it cleaned up I hope. The albatross chicks around the buildings with lead paint die frequently from developmental problems.

Inside the machine shop there are the usual tools such as drill presses, saws, etc. I doubt if any of them are functional because they are very rusty. This picture shows a big lathe and a shark cage. I assume that's here from the days when people were allowed to scuba dive here. It's really interesting to check these places out.

Plane Night

2008-05-17T01:02:00.003-11:00

Another week and another new bunch of people. The bug guys, marine debris gals, Ben, Alex, and Kristin all left, and Dave, two volunteers who will be going to Laysan & Tern Islands next week, and the new hydroponic gardener from Thailand all came in. For being such a remote island, we get a lot of activity.

We've been seeing Laysan ducks everywhere lately. A pair of ducks followed me around for about 20 minutes today while I was walking through the field. I even walked faster, and took a few turns to see if I could lose them, but they kept up. I don't know what they were expecting, or why I was so interesting to them, but it's great to see that this endangered species is doing so well. Normally, the endangered species etiquette is to stay 150 ft. away, so maybe these ducks were just trying to get me in trouble for being too close.

I took this picture a while ago, but since I talked about the ducks, I'll give you a picture of them. These two were on Eastern Island.

Going Away Thursday

2008-05-15T19:08:00.004-11:00

Another day of getting rid of weeds and chainsawing ironwoods followed by a jump off the cargo pier. We are having a going away party for a few people tonight. Kristin is done volunteering here. Alex the firefighter is out of here tomorrow. And Ben, the airport manager is leaving to learn to fly. The airport manager that Ben replaced, Dave, is coming back out here, and Dave O. the firefighter, is also coming back, for those of you who know them.

This white tern found a decent spot to lay an egg on Eastern Island.

Albatross Painting Again

2008-05-14T22:12:00.004-11:00

This morning we went back to Eastern Island to paint some more of the decoys. The other short-tailed albatross was not there right now, but again, we are hoping for more next year. We also brought the two guys over there who are here to study moths.
This afternoon, Greg and I did some spraying and the volunteers checked the albatross plots. So it was a usual Wednesday afternoon.

The red-footed booby chicks are hatching now. It will take a while to get the red feet.

The mullets swim around the piers on the surface looking for food. This fish looks like it's about 3 pounds or so.

Dolphin Pics

2008-05-13T22:09:00.004-11:00

I forgot to tell you about the short-tailed albatross. We painted them up on Friday, and on Saturday a group of people saw one of the real birds hanging out there. It was the one I showed you last week, so it apparently likes the new, colorful decoys.
I took quite a few pictures on Saturday, so I am still putting them up from then.

Here are two consecutive pictures of the same dolphin spinning out in the harbor. I just zoomed in a little on the computer on the second.

Marine Debris

2008-05-12T19:28:00.002-11:00

Today was a usual Monday, checking our weather station, preparing the chainsaws, spraying some verbesina, and marking some more invasives on the GPS. Two people came in on the plane to study marine debris on Friday, so the volunteers helped them with that. The idea is to clean up certain areas of the beaches and monitor them over the next year to catalog the types of debris, and how much there is. Dow chemical is even getting involved and will analyze the plastics to find where they were made. Some of the debris will be marked and left on the beach to see the rate that it gets washed out again. So if any future volunteers are reading this right now, be ready to do that.

Here's another shot from Saturday. Ben, Kristin, and Brandon are coming back to the beach after some kayaking.

Another Nice Weekend

2008-05-11T20:15:00.004-11:00

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. And congratulations to Phil & Lisa on your wedding (my brother got married in Chicago on Saturday). Don't forget to send pictures.

It was beautiful again this weekend. Just a few clouds and not much wind. The albatross chicks are trying to find shade and panting like crazy to cool down.

I was over at the cliffs on the north beach taking pictures. The cliffs are only 2 feet tall, but it's still interesting to see the same erosion patterns as real rock cliffs.

I love the colors of the water.

Painting Short-tails

2008-05-09T23:37:00.003-11:00

The short-tailed albatross decoys on Eastern Island needed painting, so that was one of this morning's projects. It had been a few years since they were painted, so maybe they'll be more noticeable with brighter colors. We also took some bunch grass plants over on the boat and planted them in the short-tail plot to spruce it up a little.
We finally got our mail today. It's been 3 weeks since we got anything, since the Navy plane that came last time, didn't bring any. Thanks for the packages Mom & Dad and Dasha.

Dana is putting the blue on the bill.

Kristen is painting the pink on the bills.

Here's one that's almost done. We didn't get all the black done, but they are a lot more colorful now, and more like the real thing.

Chainsaw Thursday Again

2008-05-08T21:35:00.005-11:00

Almost all of our albatross chicks are banded now. There are 3 birds that have wandered off and we can't find them at the moment, but we'll keep looking over the next few weeks. They do that every now and then, but they usually come back near their nests so the adults can find them.

We also got a lot of trees cut today. It's nice to feel the breeze coming through areas as soon as we cut down the trees. Here is what we got cut down last week.

Here is the "before" picture of Radar Hill with the haole koa and castor beans.

The "after" picture, where you can see the old radar installation.

An albatross chick has a good view now that the trees are gone. It can also climb pretty well apparently.

New Short-tailed Albatross

2008-05-07T19:52:00.007-11:00

A fourth short-tailed albatross was spotted over by the harbor. The other ones haven't been seen for a while though so it might not find them this year. It looks a little older than the other two sub-adults that were here. It would be nice if it returns in the fall.

We had another busy day of albatross banding and spraying verbesina. Again, we still have a lot to go on both fronts though.

For anyone who makes comments on my blog, I have made it a little more difficult. All you have to do is read a word and type it in. It will at least slow down those people who are posting SPAM comments. Anytime you see a comment with poor english and a link to something, it's probably garbage.

This is the new short-tail sitting in the trees by the harbor.

One Month Left

2008-05-06T19:18:00.008-11:00

Eleven months gone and only one to go. It's gone really fast. I'm still loving it out here.
We did a lot more bird banding this morning. We are about 2/3 done with the Black-footed albatross and still have the Laysan albatross to go. Greg and I did a lot of spraying this afternoon today also.
Since it was a pretty calm day today, a few of us went snorkeling out by the water barge after work. It was the first time I had been out there, and it was a good spot. There was a lot of junk down there. There were anchors, pieces of boats, engines, and all kinds of other hiding spots for fish. We also saw a 4 ft Galapagos shark. Since it was little, there was nothing to worry about. It's a great spot.

I took this picture of an octopus and pencil urchins next to a nice piece of coral a few months ago. I didn't see any octopus today, but at least it's a picture what I see sometimes when snorkeling.

Back to Work

2008-05-05T18:43:00.003-11:00

It was a usual Monday today. I sharpened the chainsaws, did some maintenance on the weather station, and plotted a few more weed locations with GPS. There isn't a lot to report on today so I'll just leave you with some pictures.

This is an almost albino Laysan albatross out near bulky dump. It has a little bit of pigment, but nowhere near as much as it's neighbor.

The albatross like to skim along the waves as they are breaking.

More Bird Pictures

2008-05-04T22:07:00.004-11:00

Although today was cloudy, I went out to take some pictures. I saw the usual seals, turtles, and birds. Another nice day. I saw a pair of ducks with 3 ducklings in one of the ponds (Brackish Pond for those of you who know the island). I found a dead duckling today, too. We send off the dead ducks (since they are an endangered species) to see why they died to make sure it isn't something that may become a problem for the other ducks.
Here are the ducklings at brackish pond.

Here is a white tern family. This is the chick I showed you a few days ago with the good parent. There are a lot of chicks around right now. There are white terns, Laysan albatrosses, Black-footed albatrosses, red-tailed tropic birds, and Bonin petrels. Soon there will be wedge-tailed shearwaters, brown noddies, frigate birds, and red-footed boobies also.

Another Saturday

2008-05-03T19:57:00.005-11:00

It was a cloudy day today,but it was a nice day to go running. I have been slacking lately and haven't run since we did the 5k. I always feel better after a run, so it's nice to get back to it. Other than that, not much went on today.

There are a few wedge-tailed shearwaters around now. These two (there's one in the shadow behind the obvious one) found a decent nesting spot under a log surrounded by verbesina.

The brown noddies are also returning and should be nesting soon.

Rainy Friday

2008-05-02T20:22:00.004-11:00

We are starting to make up for the dry weather we were having. It's been raining off and on since yesterday. That meant it was a day for doing inside things like chainsaw maintenance and ordering supplies. We almost had another medevac today. A person on board a cargo ship was injured a couple of days ago, but they decided to wait for medical attention until they get to port. It happens pretty frequently that people set up for medevacs with the Coast Guard, but it takes 2 or 3 days to get to Midway, so the injured person stabilizes and they decide they can wait to get to Honolulu. I hope it will work out alright.

The guys working for Chugach have been cleaning out the seaplane hangar. They removed a lot of heavy equipment and random junk. When it's clean they'll put some of it back in and organize a little better.

As you can see, this building needs some serious renovation. This is the 2nd floor, which you can see in the top picture. There are holes in the floor and concrete is falling from the ceiling. I wouldn't walk on the floor in this picture at all since the only thing keeping someone from falling through are the tiles. There is money for the restoration of this building since it is a historic structure, so in about 4 years it should be fixed up.