3 Day Weekend

Today was a good day on Midway. I pulled some ironwood saplings on the beach. It was hot work, but I cooled down by going snorkeling with a few people on the other side of the atoll. The water is still fairly warm for November. I don't need a wetsuit yet, although a couple people wore them. We we saw an octopus swimming around today. I have pictures on my underwater film camera so you can't see those quite yet.


We're still getting more albatrosses in every day. If this picture was bigger, you'd be able to see hundreds of them.

Friday

Sorry I didn't blog last night but we had a bonfire last night to get rid of some of the ironwood we've been piling up and I got home too late. Quite a few people left on the plane today, so it was sort of a going away party.
The planes are going to be very crowded from now until after Christmas. The construction workers will be leaving the island for a month and a bird counting group will be coming in. The bird counters will go around the atoll and count every albatross. There should be at least a half million birds so they'll be pretty busy I think.
The plane took off today and got about 15 minutes away when they turned around and came back. They thought they had a problem with the propeller, but it turned out that nothing was wrong and they left again right away.



Here's Tawan, Kate, Zen, and Wendy. Wendy and Kate are done with their coral reef work for now so they left today.

5 Moths

This time I know I made the spelling error but I left it because "5 Moths" is a little bit funnier than "5 Months".

Today I was supposed to have 1 month to go, but now I guess it's 7 months to go. Obviously it's still great here or I wouldn't be staying. It's so nice not having to worry about the price of gas, crime, politics, or any of that other bad news that brings you down.

It's supposed to be cooling down here since it's November, today it was in the mid 80's. I was hot in my spray coveralls and the goony birds were panting all day in the sun. This morning I was seeing one bird fly in every 20 minutes or so and by afternoon I was seeing about 20 birds every 5 minutes coming in.

I'm sure you'll get your fill of albatross pictures soon so here's one of my favorite white tern pictures. I like these friendly little birds. In fact, this is the picture I have as my desktop background (a higher resolution one).

Hello, I'm back again

Thanks for the comments, those of you who make them. Our phones and internet are mostly back up now. The internet isn't back up at the office yet though. We should have a little better connection now.

I've been busy this week but I don't have much real news.

As I told you before, since we're close to the International Date Line, all of our holidays are a little off. So we had our Halloween party on Saturday night. Most people scrounged up enough for a costume.

We did a lot of mowing at least until the tractor broke again. Now we're back to spraying the weeds. We cleared a lot of area for the birds. The acting refuge manager counts the birds by the runway every day to see when we have to switch to night flights. Today there were about 2,000 black-footed, and 400 Laysan albatross. There are still not enough of them flying around to switch to night flights yet, but maybe by next week.

Our dish is moved.

The birds are getting a little more crowded. There's a few thousand here already just in the areas we've mowed.

Here's Ben at the Halloween party with the Chupa Cabra pinata that our physician's assistant Jim made.

2nd Try

As is the usual on Midway, things changed again. We just got word that our cargo plane is coming tomorrow night so our internet and phones will be shut off early tomorrow (today for all of you). Again it will be at least 6 days until we get the service back.

We had bad news and good news on the mowing today. The bad news is that we found the mower that we used yesterday had a flat tire and can't be used. The good news is that Thawal (our mechanic from Thailand) fixed the clutch on the tractor, so that's back in use. Today we got enough mowed for a few hundred albatross.

Other news: I have been asked to extend here for another 6 months. I told them I would. That's why I've been working all the extra time on Saturdays. I'm taking time off during Christmas and need some comp time so I don't have to take leave without pay. I'll still leave on Dec. 7 like I planned, but I'll just come back in January.

The fuel barge left this morning. Now we're set for a while.

This is the road that goes near the old gun emplacements, old bunker, and cemetery. For you guys who used to be here, it's Roosevelt drive. It probably wasn't so overgrown when the housing was here (this used to be a real street).

This is the bunker that I never knew existed until some weeds were cleared.

From the inside.

Back On

Our internet hasn't been off very long because the cargo plane that was bringing supplies for the satellite move can't come. We don't know when it will be rescheduled so they are leaving our phone and internet on most of the time, and only shutting down for short periods at a time to do some repairs.

The Laysan albatrosses are back now. I saw one in a yard down the street. They'll come and go for a week or two, then they'll all come and stay. There are a couple hundred black-footed albatrosses here now. It looks like they are ready to stay. Most of them are in the areas we just mowed, so we got it done just in time. We still have a few more places to mow, but we got the little mower stuck in a petrel hole again. I might just have to tow the mower around the fields with the backhoe for how much I'm getting it unstuck.

Here's the first Laysan albatross I've seen this season.

A black-footed albatross is landing.

A perfect landing, except where it crashed into the ground between shot #3 and #4.

Lack of Communication

So tomorrow the internet and phones will be off. 6 days is the estimate but you'll know if it takes longer than that. I'll blog as soon as I can.
We're expecting a fuel barge tomorrow to fill our new tanks, so I hope that goes alright. The tanks are brand new, but should be ready.
The clutch in our tractor went out yesterday from all the stop and go driving, so we got a smaller mower. I got it stuck because one of the wheels caved in a petrel burrow (they are out feeding during the day and not in their holes). I had to go get the backhoe and pull it out. Our mowing will be a lot slower now, but the albatross are just waiting to get into those verbesina areas. I'm sure there will be lots of news when I'm able to post again. Have a good week!


A white tern is resting on a piece of concrete at bulky dump.