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.