Computer Day

It was another cool, cloudy day today. It seems like winter is coming. I spent the day on the computer doing our annual report on invasive species. It's to show where our time and resources are going and if it's worth it. I think it is. We actually have got more done than I thought we would.

The plane is coming tomorrow with a lot of people (13 I think). I'm supposed to be getting a new room mate. It shouldn't be too bad, especially since it keeps my rent down.

This is an old bunker hiding in the ironwoods.

We use it to store rat traps and there's some other random junk in there.

Rainy Wednesday

We got rained on again today as we were marking the black-footed albatross nests in the plots. Our plots are 20 x 20 meters and so far we have an average of about 35 nests per plot (there will be more). We do these plots to check reproductive success for the birds. We have some other plots that check for overall survival rates.

Most of the verbesina is dying off now for the winter season, so we have more time to do the other things. There's plenty of it still flowering and sprouting, but it doesn't grow so quickly this time of year.

You can never have too much of Turtle Beach.

Stuck Computer & Stuck Forklift

Greg and I spent another half a day trying to get that awful Lotus Notes email program working. That makes a day and a half that we've wasted on it, but it finally works. It's been cool out here lately. It got down to 62 F last night, but it warmed up to 78 this afternoon. A lot of people are actually wearing long pants and sweatshirts. There's a few of us on the island that still think it's not that cold yet.

This afternoon was interesting. We got the forklift stuck twice while we were moving palates of spray chemicals. At least we had the backhoe to pull it out. I had my reservations about taking the forklift on softer ground but I was assured that it would make it. After I got it stuck, one of the very experienced guys said he'd show me how not to get stuck and made it about 3 feet, and of course, sank right in. We ended up unpacking the boxes and moving the stuff in a little cart. It was 68 boxes at about 45 lbs each, so I got a decent workout today.

Here's some more albatrosses for you. That square thing in the background is the hangar.

The south shore of Eastern Island.

Monday

It quit raining today, and I saw a new bird today. It was a black headed gull, which doesn't have a black head by the way (at least with its winter plumage). It was standing in a puddle in a road. I didn't get a picture of it because I didn't have my camera. Our last red tailed tropic bird chick left the plot last week so now we only have to check the albatross plots for a few months.

I've got some more pictures from Eastern Island a couple of weeks ago.

Here's a juvenile frigatebird watching the boat go away after it dropped us off.

Some brown noddies and a masked booby on a cement block.

Rainy Sunday

It rained the entire day today so I had a chance to clean up the house and do a couple of office projects also. Some of the albatrosses laid their eggs in low spots that filled up with water, so I hope they could keep their eggs warm enough to make it. There wasn't any news today so I'll just give you one picture and try to do better tomorrow.


A green sea turtle is sleeping on the beach.

A Little Work

I cut down some more little ironwood trees to make sure they don't get too big. I didn't do much else besides that. I watched some movies and was lazy. I was sorting through my marine debris pictures, so I'll give you a couple of those today.

The east side of Eastern Island.

A couple of seals are sleeping next to the marine debris.

Back to Work for a Day

There are so many albatrosses dropping eggs right now that we had to spend the whole day marking their nests and banding them. Greg's hands are all bit up from trying to hold them while I band them. They really don't bite that hard but the point of their bill is very sharp so they scratch pretty good. One of these days we'll remember to bring gloves for him. You can see pictures of the bird banding from June earlier on my blog, but it's the same thing now.

It's only 2 weeks until I go back to Hawaii for a week with Dasha (my girlfriend) then back to visit in OH, MN, and ND. That means tomorrow is another day of working for comp time.

Jim (our P.A.) and I are taking some duck pictures at the Radar Hill seep.

This is just me taking Laysan teal pictures (Photos used with permission of Jim Cassell and Nancy Wallander (as soon as I ask them tomorrow)).