Back to Work

It was a good weekend but now it's back to getting rid of the invasive species. We've done a lot of spraying already this week now that things are back to normal. It goes much slower than it did a couple of months ago because there are so many petrel burrows to watch out for.

There are two people out here now that are doing some work on our lead paint problem. They are sampling the ground near the buildings and checking the blood levels of lead in albatross chicks. They've been finding that there are very high lead levels within 5m of the buildings. Some of the chicks have such high blood lead levels that their analyzer can't even measure it. The chicks aren't old enough to really see the developmental problems yet, but many of them will get "droop wing", where their wings will droop and scrape the ground when they walk. Most of those die. They don't try to eat the lead paint, but when they pick up sand to make their nests or just pick up little pieces to play with, they end up ingesting it. That's another one of our big problems out here besides the plastic, marine debris, invasive species, coral bleaching, etc. It's another thing that we are just waiting for the money to take care of it.
Dasha and I were putting this little albatross out of Greg's backyard all the time. It kept on getting back in and the parents couldn't feed it. It looked like it was too big for the holes, but I found out otherwise.

Now we have blocked all the holes so it stays out where it can get fed.

Songkran

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but my camera ran out of batteries before I could transfer the pics. It ran out of batteries because I took a lot of pictures at the Songkran celebration for the Thai New Year. The main activities are pouring water on the Buddha, paying respects to the elders, and throwing lots of water on everybody. People are also wiped with a white, fragrant paste. I'm not sure of the significance of that, but that's what they do. It was a lot of fun and we had good food and games.

The Thai guys made a few sand sculptures.

We even had a parade! It went from the Chugach office, past my house, and up to Capt. Brooks'.

Kristin and Dana are "Miss Songkran".

The soaking begins right after pouring water on the Buddha and pouring water on the elder's hands.

Thawal is getting dowsed.

1st Annual Midway 5k

It was really nice today for the 5k. I ended up in fourth overall with a time of 22:42. John Klavitter won and Matt Brown was 1 second later with 19:57 and 19:58 respectively. Alex (fireman) was 3rd at 22:33 and Brandon (fireman) finished off the top 5. It was a lot of fun. Since John and Matt were also in my age group, I only got 1 ticket for the prizes. It was enough though because I won the DVD player. "E" (Thai) won the TV.

Aside from that, the visitor group left today. Again, they were a great group that really liked it here. We will have a little break in the visitor program for a few weeks, and they'll be back in May.

Melanie, our Physician's Assistant, also left today. She'll be going to her summer job as a P.A. in Yellowstone Park. She'll be back in the fall, but I'll be gone by then. Her replacement, Jesse, came in on the Wednesday flight, and he seems like he'll work out well too. Some of you who've been here may have noticed I said Brandon came in 5th. He had left last July and is now back for 5 weeks to fill in for vacationing fire fighters. Greg came back on tonight's plane too, so now we'll be able to catch up on some of the invasive species that lhave been growing like crazy lately.

Here are the bike riders about to start in front of the Bravo Barracks.

Aun is crossing the finish line with JR passing the gooney chick in the background. We had to dodge the chicks over most of the course. If we waited another month, we would have had thousands in the roads instead of only a bunch.

The Fish & Wildlife crew. Cindy, Brent, Kristin, Matt, Murray, Me, John (with his marine debris #1 medal), Barry, and Dana.

Spit Island

We went over to spit island today to go pull any verbesina, ironwoods, and other pests that are coming up. It was a worthwhile trip, plus we saw a 2 baby seals. One was just over a week old and the other was probably about 6 weeks old. There were also 2 other adults on the other side of the island.

Tomorrow we are having our 5k run/walk/bike. I'm in the 31-40 age group and there are a few people that I think can beat me. I would've had a good chance if it was 30-39. At least everyone who participates or helps out gets a chance to win the TV. Most people are going to take part. There are going to be a lot of walkers in the older age groups. It should be fun.

Here is the young pup and the mother. The mother only has one eye after a shark got her a couple years ago. The other pup is in the water just out of the picture, I'm sure it would have liked to play with this pup, but it swam off when the mother went in. The mothers will chase off other pups and even bite them to keep them away.

Cindy found a dessicated triggerfish, and here's Dana holding it for Brent's picture.

I'm not sure what kind of triggerfish this is since it has no color left, but its teeth are still white and sharp.

Radar Hill is Done

Another chainsaw Thursday and today we finally got done with radar hill. We started back in June so it took about 10 months of working almost every week. It feels good to get that done, but I think next week we'll start on Mount Bart. Mount Bart is a hill that was made when they removed the Navy housing from Radar Hill. They buried all the debris from that so there's a little hill there now.
This morning the volunteers and I showed the visitors group how to clone the bunch grass. There were a lot of people today so we got a lot of pots planted. Everyone seemed to enjoy getting their hands a little dirty.

This was a view of part of Radar Hill back in July.

This is the view now. It's a different spot but it's a nice big clear area now. We probably won't be taking any of the trees down that you can see in the background because they are too big and it would be too much trouble.

Windy Day

It was really windy and slightly rainy all day today, but I still took some time off to go around the island with Dasha on her last day here. There were more birds flying around today than I've seen before so it was interesting. She really had a good time here, but it's really hard not to. She got out this evening so I hope with all the airline troubles that she makes it out of Hawaii in the morning.

Here are the albatrosses over at the parade field. Sorry for the bad lighting, but you can tell there are a lot of birds.

A bird came over and started biting Dasha's sweatshirt. They do that a lot when you just sit in one spot for a while. Some of them like to untie shoelaces too if you stand in one place too long.

NIce Tuesday

Thanks for your comments yesterday, it's always nice to hear good stuff. Today I caught up on some computer work while the volunteers checked the albatross plots. I also took Dasha to a few places on the island that she hadn't seen yet like Frigate Point (and there were a lot of frigate birds there today). Dasha also picked up some marine debris on North Beach. It was another good day as usual.

Here are a few of the things we found on the beach today.

A Laysan albatross is flying around North Beach. That's an old fuel tank in the background.

Here's a Black-footed albatross too. The light wasn't so good today since it was cloudy, but it's still cool to see their wingspans.