Busy Day

We had a good morning of spraying while the volunteers checked the tropic bird plots. There was still only one bird on a nest. We did chainsawing in the afternoon. We're really getting a lot done with the extra help. It will be nice to take it easy this weekend.

Here's a Gooney bird near the ofice. Sometimes it just fits better to say "gooney bird" than Laysan albatross.

Clean Up

We finally got one pond cleaned up today at the ballfield seep. All of the umbrella sedges are gone. They'll probably come back, but we'll worry about that later.

I'll keep it short today, so here's your picture.

The last umbrella sedge is getting pulled out.

Another Rainy Day

Today was albatross plot day. We did that in the morning and most of the rest of the day we worked on landscaping around the office.

I found an albatross chick stuck in a petrel hole. The parent was still feeding it so it was just getting fatter and more stuck. I had to dig it out. That actually happens quite a bit.
I also saw a black-footed albatross with fishing line hanging out of its mouth attached to a bunch of fish eggs. It was trying like crazy to get the line out so I caught the bird to help out. It ended up throwing up its food, luckily, the fish hook came out with the eggs. Although it has to take another trip out for food, at least it, or its chick won't get a hook stuck in them.

Kristin and Jimmy are checking the albatross chicks for their band numbers.

Dana, Lauren, Kristin, and Rex are trimming the naupaka and pulling weeds by the office. I'm finally getting a few pictures of people working. I haven't had too many of those, but now with a few extra people around, I can show the work instead of just birds or scenery.

Weed Work

Today Greg and I got a lot of spraying in. Right now we are just trying to keep the verbesina thin enough so that the birds can walk around since there are too many plants to clear completely.

Tonight we had a couple of talks up at Capt. Brooks'. Christy gave a talk on the relationship between bugs and verbesina, and Janet gave a talk on her petrel research. It's nice to know what people are up to when they are out here and why it's important.

The white terns are coming back like crazy now. There were always a few around, but now they are everywhere. This is an earlier picture, but I like it.

Surprise Plane and Petrels

It was a good day for working with plants. Greg and I got a lot of spraying done and the volunteers went and planted some native plants over at the ballfield seep to replace the umbrella sedges that we took out. The ducks like to have a lot of plants there because that's where the bugs hide.

Tonight the plane flew in and brought us some mail unexpectedly. It was on it's way to the Marshall Islands and needed to stop here for fuel and rest for the pilots. They'll leave before sunrise and come back for their normal flight on Friday.

I also went out tonight to help catch and band the petrels. I hadn't done it for a while, but it was about my turn again. Janet and Jen are leaving Friday, so there will only be one more night of them doing that.

Jen, Lauren, and Dana are all bundled up while we were catching the petrels. It was 69 degrees so I didn't think it was so cold. Lauren and Dana live in Hawaii so they have an excuse. Jen is from Canada, so I guess she's just practicing for getting back there next week.

Lauren is having a good time anyway.

Movie Night

It was another day with not a lot going on. I didn't do much, just some reading. This evening we had a movie at the theater (Ghostbusters). I hadn't seen it for a while, so it was worth seeing again. That's about it for today.

This chick looks like it's taking care of the egg. It was really just sitting near it, but it looked funny.

Volleyball Day

It was a cool day again today, but warm enough to play volleyball this afternoon. After the game we had to go over to cargo pier and jump off. A lot of people said it was too cold so they didn't go, but the ones that went had a good time. The band is playing at the All Hands Club again tonight. The occasion is that the construction workers are leaving on Friday and no one wants to have a party on a weeknight.

Here's the game near Capt. Brooks'.

This is Zen trying to dive, but he didn't jump far enough so it ended up being a belly flop.