Wisdom's Chick

It's nice to be back on Midway, after my 2 weeks working in Honolulu.  The big news is that Wisdom has another chick.  For those who don't know who Wisdom is, she's the oldest known wild bird, and is at least 63 years old, banded as an adult in 1956.  She still looking about the same as always.

The Short-tailed albatross chick is old enough to be left on its own now.  The parents don't leave for long when the chick is young, so they are feeding it frequently.  It has been very cool, windy, and a bit rainy for the past month or so, so the other albatross parents are aren't leaving them alone much yet.

This is Wisdom and her chick.  You can see a bit of Wisdom's red leg band on her right leg.  

 Here's another photo of Wisdom and her chick.

 This is the greenhouse over on Eastern Island.  It was originally built as a temporary Laysan duck home when they were first translocated from Laysan Island.  The greenhouse is empty right now because the weather has been so bad that the crew hasn't been able to spend much time over there.
 

 Here are some Black noddies on the roof of the hydroponics garden.  I don't go in there too much, but we had a tour for some folks from the regional USFWS office out here on a site visit.

 It wasn't the best day for hanging out on the beach, but it was OK for taking albatross pictures.

 A lot of marine debris has washed up on the beaches in the last month due to the wind.  This fishing float has quite a few barnacles growing on it.

 Most of the chicks are hatched now, but this in one of the later ones that is only one day old.

 This chick isn't quite ready to be left on its own, but the parent is giving it a little space.

In Honolulu

I've been working in Honolulu this week, so there isn't a lot of Midway news that I have for you.   I told you a while back that you can look at Google street view and take a virtual tour of Midway, at least on Sand Island, but they have now put up streetview for most of the rest of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.  You can now see Lisianski and Laysan Islands, Pearl and Hermes Atoll, and French Frigate Shoals (Tern and East Islands).  If you've ever been wondering what some of those other islands look like, now you can find out.  Here are a couple of links that talk about it.

http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/community/nw-hawaiian-islands-go-live-google-street-view

http://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/news/google_streetview.html

 I probably won't post a blog next week, but I will the week after when I'm back on Midway.

I took this photo before I left.  This shows one of the access trails that we maintain on Eastern Island.

Our flight back to Honolulu was pretty quick.  You can see how fast the plane was going.

 I've been staying in the USFWS bunkhouse to save some travel money.  I used to stay here all the time when I worked on Tern Island.  There are a few other temporary FWS people staying here too.

 It's the Chinese New Year (year of the Horse) so we went to Chinatown last night.   It was pretty crowded over there.

Today I went over to the tide pools near the Makapu'u lighthouse with my friend Julia, who used to work on Kure Atoll.  If you were watching the pro-bowl today, you saw that Oahu wasn't very sunny today.

 There is an interesting blowhole there from the surf.  This is called the Dragon's Nostrils.

It's a little more impressive in this photo.

 There were quite a few humpbacked whales in view.  Most of them were too far out for good photos, but I got a few fin and tail photos.

More Chicks Hatching

It's been a pretty windy winter so far.  We haven't been able to get over to Eastern Island too much lately. According to the wind forecast, we'll have winds in the 20's and 30's (mph) for the next few days.  I'm glad the volunteers finished up the albatross survival plots this past week.  Those are the plots that we check every year to see how many adults survive from the previous years.  The black-footed albatross chicks have started hatching.  I don't have any photos of them yet since there are only a few so far.  By next week they should be hatching everywhere.  

I'll be off island for 2 weeks starting Tuesday, but I'll be working in Honolulu so I should be able to put up a few more photos next week.

 Hoku and Shirley are checking one of the Laysan albatross survival plots on the south side of Eastern Island.

 I finally got to Eastern Island to get a few photos of the Short-tailed albatross chick from this season.  It looks pretty similar to the 2 that hatched in 2011 and 2012.  We'll probably be posting a couple more links to video on the flickr page over the season.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157625522391142/

 I had my 300 mm zoom and cropped the photo so you could just see the Short-tailed albatross' head.  I didn't adjust the color in this at all so you could see how golden the head looks in the sun.  Sometimes it's hard to tell the real color of these birds since most people try to adjust the contrast or saturation of their photos to make it look brighter yellow.  By the way, I rarely change anything in my photos other than crop them, although since the bright sun makes such harsh shadows out here, sometimes I'll adjust the shadows so you can actually see what's there.

 This hybrid Black-footed/Laysan albatross was over on Eastern.  I rarely can get photos of them all together.

 We had a couple of birds with problems this week.  It's pretty common to have Laysan ducks get plastic rings stuck around their necks.  This female duck flew off before we could catch it.  We'll have to try again later.

 This is the other bird.  You can see the fish hook stuck in the Black-footed albatross' foot.  Thanks Hope Ronco for these two fish hook photos.

You can see we have only the most up to date surgical equipment for working on our birds.   Volunteer Ann, the Physicians Assistant, Mike and I are removing the hook.  Those stainless steel hooks are extremely hard to cut.  We tried 4 different kinds of metal cutters and these giant bolt cutters were the only thing strong enough to cut through the hook.

 The waves coming in from the north behind the emergent reef were pretty big again, although not as big as a month ago.

 Here's another visiting bird that is normally not seen on Midway.  This is a Slaty-backed gull, which normally is on the East coast of Asia or western coast of Alaska.

I was wondering why this bird liked to sit in the water instead of the land.  After watching it for a while, I saw that it only had one foot, although you can't tell from the 2 photos that I put up.

Back From Vacation

I'm back from a 2 week Christmas vacation in Alexandria, VA.  I like to get back to the cold every once in a while so I'm reminded that 60 degrees on Midway is actually pretty warm.  The end of December was pretty busy around here with 2 monument groups visiting for a few days each.  One group had members of the Monument Management Board, and one group had the communication team from the monument.   The yearly albatross nest counters also were here (while I was gone).  The numbers aren't official yet, but it looks like there are fewer nests than last season.  That's kind of expected since last year was a pretty good year and it usually drips after a high year.  

Some other big news is that another Short-tailed albatross chick hatched on Eastern Island on Jan. 9th.  The pair took a year off last year, so this is the third chick that has hatched at Midway.   I haven't gotten over there yet to get any photos, but we got some remote video.  Here is the story with a couple of links in it:    

http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com/post/72881378762/at-last-the-first-video-of-a-brand-new-rare-and

 On the last post I showed you a photo of my backyard on Midway with all of the albatross.  This is a view of my backyard in Alexandria on a snowy night.

 Dasha and I went to Arlington Cemetery on Christmas Day.  They place wreaths on many of the graves.

 This is the Monument Management Board group checking out Sunset Seep on Eastern Island.

 I didn't have many photos for this post, so I went out this morning after brunch and took some photos from the North Beach.

 These birds have a nice spot overlooking North Beach.  The sweet alyssum has been really fragrant the past few days.

 You can see Charlie Barracks in the distance.

There's always some bird getting in the way of my other bird photos.

Happy Winter!

We've been getting a lot of wind and rain for the past week, and it's supposed to continue through this week too.  I'm not complaining.  At least it's in the 60's, although with people in winter coats and wool hats, you wouldn't guess that.

We had a group come to the island for a couple of days this week.  People on the Monument Management Board (USFWS, NOAA, and the State of Hawaii) were able to visit.  We always like to have people who are involved in management decisions come out and are able to see what it's like out here.  Most of them end up saying, "I knew there were a lot of birds here, but I didn't expect this many".  

 Wisdom's mate is now back on the nest.  She's out filling up with food after laying that big egg.

 The MMB group is getting a tour of Eastern Island.  That brown stuff on the horizon is all of the dead verbesina that was recently sprayed.

 Is anyone missing their front bumper cover?

 We took the group out to Reef Hotel for snorkeling.  It was really rough.  You can see a big surge coming over the emergent reef toward Rick.

 This was the first time I've been out there where water was actually washing over the reef.  Normally it dissipates before it gets there.

The underwater photos weren't quite as good as usual with all the bubbles. 

This is what it is supposed to look like (taken in June).

"OH, OH, OH!  The Clipper House Christmas decorations are up.

This is the view out the back door of my house.  There was a decent rain, but you can't really tell from this photo.

Wisdom is Here

 For those of you who were wondering, Wisdom is back again this year and has laid another egg.  If you are new to the blog, Wisdom is the oldest known wild bird.  She is at least 62 years old.  We know she is at least that old because she was banded as an adult on a nest in 1956, and albatross are at least 5 years old when they mate.  I noticed that I never did mention that her chick fledged last season.  We are assuming that it did, since we had no evidence to the contrary.  Here are a few links with more of my photos, and a video that I got of Wisdom laying the egg.
 http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com/post/69106441224/wisdom-the-laysan-albatross-returned-to-midway
http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com/post/37132842813/sharing-wisdom-worlds-oldest-banded-bird-teaches-us
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/sets/72157632891366006/with/11214517633/

It was the Thai king's birthday on December 5th.  We had a nice celebration here at one of the Thai houses.  The Thai's usually have big celebrations for the king's birthday and Songkran (the Traditional Thai New Year), which is in April.  

Wisdom (on the left) is sitting with her mate.

This is Wisdom a few minutes after she laid her egg.

There were photos and information about the Thai king posted in the Clipper House for the week.

There was also a birthday card for people on island to sign.

The actual birthday celebration was a good time with a lot of Thai food.

I haven't shown many Black-footed albatross lately, so here's one.

A lot of food!

 I hope everyone had a great long weekend.  We had a great Thanksgiving dinner.  The cooks did a wonderful job cooking turkey, ham, steaks, all the usual side dishes, and more.  I just finished up my leftovers today.
 
We're keeping busy monitoring the albatross plots.  It's about the peak of egg laying this week.  We also have to put bands on any new nesting birds in the plots so we can keep track of which parent is on the nest.  Luckily, most of them have bands on them already since we've been monitoring these areas for a few years and the birds nest in almost the same spot each year.

As usual, the tables at the Clipper House were all put together for the holiday meal. 

Wine isn't normally allowed at meals in the Clipper House, but they make holiday exceptions. 

The pumpkin pie and carrot cake was good.

The volunteers check for new eggs in the Black-footed albatross plot near the end of the runway.

This is what the parade field looks like this week. 

This albatross has a rusty fish hook in its neck.  We caught it to try to remove it, but it's been in so long that it has healed into the skin.  I'm sure the hook was nice stainless steel when it went in and it will probably be worse for the bird to take it out since the bird looks very healthy.