No Ducks

Tonight I was going to go out and try to catch ducks to band with Jimmy and Michelle. They wanted some pictures of what they do, and since they are always busy, they can't really take pictures of themselves. Which is why you rarely see me in any pictures. The ducks are usually easier to catch at night, but lately it's been clear and the moon is nearly full, so the ducks can see you coming easier and get away. So we'll see if it's cloudier tomorrow when it may not be so bright.

The mowing is getting difficult because we are finding lots of cement foundations, metal chunks, and ironwood piles hidden in the verbesina. Last year the tractor transmission got cracked because of a big ironwood branch that was partially buried. We're getting the areas that are relatively clear now just so we can move quicker. It's kind of funny to watch the albatross move into the areas we mow as soon as we're done. They usually know exactly where they want to go. They haven't been coming in en masse yet. They get here and look around for a while then take off. Pretty soon they'll stay for good or at least until the eggs are laid.


A couple of my old Midway pals who were here earlier this summer and have left finally found my blog. So like I said before, fell free to forward this to anyone who might be interested.


Here's some more of the daily Midway life, or at least the Mon, Wed, & Sat life for 1 hour. This is our store which has about as much stuff as a little gas station. You can see the soda section is about as big as the rest of the store.


Here's most of the rest of the store, and Scott (who operates the weather station) is waiting in line. As you can see, there's not a huge selection.


I'll give you one wildlife picture. Here's the monk seal that was in the Spit Island picture a few days ago. I told you they like to sleep next to things.

Unexpected Plane Day

We had a plane today which I didn't know was coming. It was chartered to bring a fuel hose here to unload the fuel we're getting soon from a barge. The barge and tug people refused to bring it, so a plane was the only way to get it here. That worked out for me though since I got two packages.

We mowed some more today. There was only one albatross that was in our mowing area, and it wandered about 20 yards away when the tractor came by.


I won't be able to blog starting this weekend for a few days since we are moving the satellite dish that has our internet and phone service. I believe that will be starting Saturday and going about 6 days (we hope). I'll let you know when I find out the details.


I took a picture of the plane taking off, since I was mowing near the runway.


These two are pictures from Spit Island on Saturday. This is an adult red-footed booby.


This one's a juvenile red-footed booby. They like heliotrope bushes.

Albatross are Back

This morning, I counted 6 black-footed albatross on the way out to mow. By quitting time there were 16 of them. There will soon be too many to count. We're going to try to get as much mowed as possible. At least there are fewer blackfoots than Laysan albatrosses, so we still could be able to mow the spots that the Laysan's like.
Tonight I played some basketball. It was a good time. I would've played takraw (the volleyball-like game where you can't use your hands) but there were too many guys playing and I didn't feel like waiting.

Here's 3 albatross enjoying the place we just mowed next to the runway. 2 of them were banded previously, which means they nested in one of our plots before.

This is one of them up close in the verbesina stems.

Greg is mowing by south beach.

Nice Weekend

Yesterday, Greg and I went over to Spit Island to pull some verbesina. It was a lot of work since we took every flower off the plants so they don't seed. Everyone thought that Spit Island was clear of the verbesina, but apparently not.
Last night we had a birthday party at the All Hands Club for the 9 people with October birthdays. Our physician assistant's wife got back from a couple months on the mainland and she's the organizer for all the parties we ever have, so it's nice to have her back. She also is organizing the movies in the theater, so that's what I did this evening. It was actually cool this evening. It's 73 degrees, but there's a cool wind.
It looks like the albatross are back. Today Barry counted 5 black-footed albatross around the island. I don't know if they'll stay yet because it's kind of early, we've still got a lot more mowing to get done before the rest of them show up.

Here's a view of the north beach of Spit Island. You can see the ironwood trees on Sand Island.

This is the other direction. You can see that Eastern Island isn't too far of a swim from Spit. That little dark spot on the lower right is a sleeping seal.

It's not easy trying to get through the naupaka and heliotrope trees. They are really thick over there.

Power Lines

Today was more of the same, spraying and mowing. It was a beautiful day though so it wasn't too bad.

We had a plane today too. A few guys went out on vacation, including one guy who's worked here for 26 years. Of course he's had vacations, but he still likes it here after all that time. He was here when there were thousands of people on the island. We also had a few people come in who'll be evaluating some of the buildings to see if they are worth saving or not.

Here are two of the last power line poles on the island. A while back the new lines were put underground. A lot of albatross died on the lines over the years. This is over at Radar Hill. I took this picture right after breakfast and I went back at lunch and they were gone.  There is only one short power line left near the old fuel farm.

Another Chainsaw Thursday

Ok, next week I'll bring my camera to show you how much we've cleared on Radar Hill. It seems like we're cutting down a lot every week, but there's still too many out there. It's like trying to mow a football field with fingernail clippers. I figure at the rate we're going, it would take about 300 years to clear the ironwoods from the island, not counting any new growth. We're not trying to get rid of all of them, thank goodness, but they are so invasive that we at least have to try to keep some areas clear. With the chainsawing, and verbesina mowing and spraying, I would say at least 20,000 more albatross can nest here. It's nice to actually see some physical benefits from your work.

Look at Peggy's comment from yesterday about frost killing the verbesina. That would be nice. One year when I lived in Big Sky, Montana we had 7" of snow on the 4th of July. I didn't see any mosquitoes the rest of the summer. I don't hold out much hope for frost though since the lowest temp. ever here was in the 50's. Maybe a lot of liquid nitrogen would do the trick?


Since it's getting dark so early, I haven't had much time for pictures in the evenings. Here's a couple that I could take during twilight.

This is our library. The door across the way by the garbage can is our store.



This is one view of our books. People have just left them there over the years. We actually have a lot of them, but before we take them home we have to make sure the termites aren't reading them too. A lot of them are unreadable because of those little bugs.

Wednesday

We finally got bulky dump completely mowed. I'm sure the black-footed albatross will be happy. Tonight Wendy (who does the coral reef stuff) showed some slides from her trip to India this summer. It was interesting. After that we played a few games of volleyball. Jimmy and Michelle didn't end up staying on Eastern last night because of the rain, so they tried again tonight to band the ducks. They both will be leaving soon so they have to band as many as possible so they can keep track of them. That's about it for today.




Lots of red-tailed tropic birds hang out at bulky dump.

Eastern Island

I did more mowing today out at bulky dump which is a lot more beautiful than it sounds. It'll probably take another day to finish. Early today was another cloudless day, so Jimmy and Michelle thought it would be a good day to go stay on Eastern Island and band ducks overnight. The ducks mostly run around at night and look for food, so that's when they like to catch them. It's been raining for the last hour, so I think they're probably getting wet over there.

There was a fuel tank over on the beach at Eastern that was buried from the Navy days and was starting to get uncovered by the weather. Today a few people went over with our backhoe on the old Navy landing craft to pick it up. That old landing craft is in poor condition and the transmission burned out just as they got it back here so they are lucky they didn't get stuck out on the water.



Here's some pictures of the view I get while mowing bulky dump. The beach is South Beach and is closed to people (except to get to the old pillbox there). There were a couple of seals there today.

Another Sunset

Today was a typical Monday. Chainsaw maintenance in the morning, and mowing in the afternoon. The verbesina was really thick and tough to walk through to look for ducks, and it was pretty hot today. But it wasn't bad work because we were right next to the ocean in a beautiful spot. I still haven't been able to take any daytime pictures so you get a couple more sunset pictures that I took tonight from the trail on the west beach.

This was the least cloudy day I have ever seen on Midway. There were still a few, but not in the pictures.

The last sliver of the sun is setting.

I zoomed in a little on the sun.

Nice Sunday

I went kayaking this afternoon since it was a beautiful sunny day. The dolphins were swimming around the beach and stayed about 100 yards away from us. That was too far for me to take any pictures. We also stopped by cargo pier on the kayaks and jumped off a few times. That was nice because it was pretty warm out on the water.

I didn't take any pictures earlier in the day, so I got some sunset pictures from the northwest tip of the island.

Tonight's sunset.

Here's a picture that Kate took of me over a month ago. There are a couple of little black specks about 50 yards from me which are the dolphins. Today they would have even been smaller specks.

Mowing and Planting

We're taking advantage of there still not being any albatross here and mowing every chance we get. They'll be back in about 3 weeks so we should be able to open up quite a bit more area for them. Today I took some pictures of the same spot before and after mowing so you can see what's up.
After mowing Greg and I went and planted some of our native morning glory over by the cable houses. We hope that it will take over a big area and keep out some of the weeds. We had good timing since it started raining as soon as we finished.

This is an area we call bulky dump. If you look at the satellite image of the island, it's the little peninsula on the south side. We got about half of it mowed the last 2 weeks.

More Mowing

We mowed most of the day today again. Greg and I took turns checking in front of the mower for birds, pipes, rocks, cement, etc. We could mow at least 5 times more area if we didn't have to look for things. Right now we are concentrating on areas that black-footed albatross like to nest since they are a threatened species. The Laysan albatross' will also nest there but they have more space options than the black-foots. I also checked the red-tailed tropic birds today. 6 of them have fledged since last time I checked, now there are only 4 left to check and only 1 hasn't been banded yet.

This is one of the tropic bird plots. They like to nest at the base of the ironwood trees. This area used to be the submarine base. You can see the harbor water through the trees on the right. The birds also like to nest next to a long cement wall that used to be part of a building. I'm sure you guys reading this that were here back in the 50's wouldn't recognize the place.

Usual Thursday

This morning I sprayed the verbesina that's coming back up in the field where the Canon School used to be. It was the school for the kids of the families stationed here and named after George Canon, whose memorial I showed you not too long ago. We have to spray there about every 2 weeks to keep up.

This afternoon was another chainsaw day. It's getting done slowly. One of these days I'll take a picture so you can see the progress. The Laysan ducks were there again watching the action, so I'll give you a picture of a couple of them.

Wednesday Work

Today I got a lot of mowing in. Greg checked in front for ducks, tropic birds, shearwaters, and cement blocks, and I drove the mower. I'm guessing we made enough space for a couple thousand albatross nests.

Tonight was volleyball night, so that was fun as usual. Other than that, it's been an uneventful but nice day. I realized I haven't given any flower pictures for a while so here's some.

The aloe that my roommates planted in back of the house is blooming. I didn't think it would make it after it sat in a plastic bag for over a week in the sun, but it's doing great now.

The hibiscus in the front yard is blooming like usual. They are always blooming somewhere on the island in different colors.

Eastern Island

Today after I did my chainsaw maintenance, we went to Eastern Island. Jimmy and Michelle went to check on the ducks, and Greg and I went to maintain the short-tailed albatross area. We brought a weed-eater and spray packs to clear the area where the one bird comes to hang out. If there are any new people reading this, we have one short-tailed albatross (an endangered species) that comes here so we set out decoys and outdoor speakers that play calls to try to get one more to stop so we can have at least one breeding pair. Jimmy dropped us off 0n the beach and we hiked to the area we worked. We see lots of birds like boobies, sooty terns, frigate birds and others, so even though it's tough walking through the thick vegetation, it's really cool to go there, especially with all the little fledgling birds. They are very curious so they fly within 3 feet of us to check us out. They are still not great flyers so every now and then they accidentally hit you with their wings.

I like this picture even though I would have liked it more if it was sunny. These are some juvenile red-footed boobies sitting on old ironwood roots near some rusty old navy stuff. I don't know what they had in this area before. All the ironwoods were removed from Eastern Island. but we still have to get rid of new saplings popping up from old seeds. There were also some monk seals on the beach but I didn't take their pictures since I didn't need to bother them.

Here are the short-tailed albatross decoys which are getting overgrown by the verbesina. We'll come back in a few weeks to make sure we've opened up enough area for the birds. We couldn't even find some of the decoys under the thick weeds.

By the way, how come nobody told me I spelled "holiday" wrong yesterday. It's not spelled "hiliday". I went back and edited it now, but you have to tell me about that stuff so I don't look dumb in front of the new people, ok?

Plane Day

Today was a holiday so I took it easy since I worked the last couple of days. The plane came today and brought 9 people. We have a new FWS employee, he's the Deputy Refuge Manager and we're now up to 6 FWS people. A few construction guys came out and a few went on vacation. Another duck person also came out to see how the ducks are doing and to help Jimmy band the new ducks from this year.



White terns like to sit on bikes.

Spring Cleaning

Today my project was to clean out some of the old termite infested furniture from our storage building. About half of our excess dressers, tables, and chairs are garbage because of termites or mildew. It' s interesting going through 30 years of stuff.


I don't know if you read John's comments about the seawall from 2 days ago or not, but I said the seawall was to prevent erosion. I was oversimplifying things a little. Basically, they put a seawall around the entire eastern part of the island and filled it in with coral and anything else that they could. Our whole harbor and boat pier area are just added land. The island was doubled in size. They dredged out the atoll and also brought in a lot of topsoil and fill from all over the pacific to make Sand Island larger. That's why we have fire ants and centipedes and most of our other invasive bugs here. Thanks John for your comments and anyone else who's been here should feel free to make comments about the history here, or anything else that you want.





These pictures are of our old furniture storage area. This building used to be the commissary, now it's just a place to store old non-functional appliances and non-useful furniture. It will probably take a few weeks of extra time to sort out the worthless stuff. I don't know what we'll do with it, but at least we'll organize a little.

Nice Day

It was a nice day today. Mostly sunny and not too hot. I finally got a chance to use the backhoe today. There was a big net on the west beach that needed to be removed. It was at least a few hundred pounds with all the sand sticking to it. There was a young seal sleeping on it a few days ago so we wanted to make sure that it wont get stuck in it.

I also cut down 140 little ironwood saplings that were growing by the beach. I just used branch cutters since most of them were less than 2" diameter. I only got about 1/4 of them done. It's really tough to keep up with them.

Tonight I think I'll play volleyball since I didn't on Wednesday. At least we don't have to worry about the turtles hatching and coming to the lights anymore.

This is an old seawall near the fuel pier. It was put there to stop erosion.

There's a lot of verbesina to get rid of here.

Turtle Nest

It's been 90 days since the turtle nest was found and we never saw any turtles, so today we dug it up because it's past the time that they should have hatched. We didn't know if there'd be anything in there since there's never been a turtle nest recorded on Sand Island. We found 83 hatched eggs and 6 unhatched eggs. Most of the unhatched eggs were unfertilized but 1 had a baby turtle that didn't make it. It looks like they hatched a couple of weeks ago but we didn't see the tracks so it was probably one night when it rained. Very few turtles survive to adulthood, so out of the 83 we'll be lucky to even get one that makes it to breeding age. Lots of turtles hang out here but they usually nest at French Frigate Shoals.

Here's Greg digging for the eggs. They were about 3 ft. deep so the little turtles have a tough time digging their way out.

Here's Barry Christenson counting the hatched eggs.

I just put this picture up since there was turtle news today.

Chainsaw Thursday

I didn't end up playing volleyball last night since it rained, but I guess some people went out. I'll go next time. This afternoon I got quite a few trees cut down from the right side of that picture yesterday. The ducks just sat there while I sawed.

There's really not much going on right now to tell you about, so I'll just post a couple of pictures.

I don't think I've shown you one of these birds yet. This is a Ruddy Turnstone. They are shorebirds that come here for the winter. They breed somewhere else. There are hundreds of them around. There's a few other winter visitors right now like 11 northern pintail ducks, a green-winged teal, some wandering tattlers, pharalopes and a couple other birds. The new ducks probably won't stay too long.

I took this picture from the fuel pier a few weeks ago. That's Eastern Island in the background.

Rainy Wednesday

I didn't do any spraying today since it was windy and rainy today, but I did do some mowing on the south side of the runway. That's where most of the black-footed albatross nest. Greg and I were just looking for mowing hazards today and clearing around them so next time it will be easier.

That's about all that went on today. I don't know if there'll be volleyball tonight or not due to the rain so I might just have to take it easy tonight.

This is a Battle of Midway memorial listing the U.S. commanders and ships. It also has a map of the battle on there. It's also the area we've been mowing and spraying lately, that's why you can't see any verbesina.

This is where we've been doing our chainsawing. You might think it looks nicer with the trees there, but it's better to have it surrounded by natural vegetation. If these trees were much bigger it would be too large of a project.

Fire Training

Today the Fire Dept. and airport guys went out for training. They put out a fire in a simulated crashed airplane (a bunch of palates laid out like an airplane). They put it out so quickly that I didn't get any good pictures of the flames. So Greg and I watched that between spraying sessions today.

The mowing was slow today because we were in an area with a little duckling that hides in the verbesina there. The mother has a radio transmitter so Jimmy came out and made sure we were no where near those ducks. Greg and Jimmy walked in front of the tractor and poked in the weeds to make sure there were no other ducks there (there weren't). I got a few more pictures today since it was sunny.

Here are the airport people putting out the fire in the palates.

We're getting a lot of nesting area cleared. That building in the distance is the communication building that you saw last week, and the area on the left is where some ducklings like to hide so there's still verbesina there.

This is a Wedge-Tailed Shearwater chick in it's burrow. This is one reason it's really hard to mow (and spray). The petrels dig even more holes than the shearwaters. In sandy areas there are usually burrows every couple of feet.

This is an adult Wedgie.

That one had a little nicer burrow. This is an old underground storage bunker by the runway. There were about 8 wedgie chicks in there last time I checked.

Another NPR Story

There was another NPR story about Midway today. This time it was about all the plastic that the birds bring here and the marine debris that washes up. Here's the link if you want to read or listen to the story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14859155


I did some mowing today and cleaned up the chainsaws to use this week. It was cloudy most of the day today and it rained a little tonight, but I managed to take a few pictures after work. I'll show you what I've mowed when it's sunny out.

This brown noddy chick fell out of a tree so it's wandering around on the ground. It's parents were nearby so it still should get fed.

This white tern chick was in the tree above the noddy chick.

The sunset is always good when it's a little cloudy.