F-18's Part II

Our Marine Corps visitors are still here this week.  A crew of marines came out on an Air Force C-130 to finish repairing the F-18, so now they are ready to go.  Other than that, it's been kind of a quiet week, meaning not a lot of new things are going on.  That doesn't mean it's not busy though.  We've had a few Laysan ducks with botulism, so we're checking all around every pond, every day for more sick or dead ones.  We've still got our lead paint remediation project going on, there is still a crew here sealing cracks on the runway, and there's still a construction crew here renovating the housing so we have enough space to put everyone.  

I'm going on vacation for a few weeks.  But I'll be back the first week in September.  Aloha.

Here's the Air Force C-130 with the F-18's.  It looks almost like the photo last week of the USMC C-130.

The west side of the island looks like a jungle.  There are big Indian almond trees, sea grape trees, a lot of ironwoods, and still a lot of verbesina.  We won't be removing the verbesina from that side of the island for a while yet.

The Sooty tern chicks over on Eastern Island are starting to fledge, so they'll still be around for a couple more months.

We're still taking care of the White tern chicks that got displaced during the lead paint remediation project.  Some of them are flying now, too.

F-18's

There's always something interesting going on around here.  On Friday we had two F-18's land when one of them had a mechanical problem.  A C-130 came late in the day with some parts.  Here are a couple of news stories about it.  

http://www.kitv.com/news/hawaii/Flights-to-Midway-Atoll-could-be-cut/-/8905354/15952580/-/m67pxo/-/index.html

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/Fighter-jet-from-Honolulu-makes-emergency-landing/O_d_MOy78U6GTf7adTZ7EQ.cspx

 This is one of the F-18's landing on Friday.

Here's the C-130 with the 2 F-18's.

Finally, the last power lines are coming down.  We've had a lot of birds die by hitting power lines over the years.  Most power lines were put underground years ago, and now there are no exceptions.

I needed one more photo for you, so here's a surge wrasse that I saw this week.