Spent Sitting Idly By

Grey-backed Terns enjoy being Grey-backed Terns.

Hmmmmmm well its Sunday. I woke up at noon so I'm still struggling to get a hold of reality. A baffling pre-dawn phone call about soy meat did not help the situation either......did that really happen? Last night was Doc Mel's going away party, which was fun but bittersweet. A lot of people are going to miss her around here. Sunday morning coffee/tea parties with cookies, brownies and cake will be no more.....it is quite tragic. No one has gotten to talk to the new doc yet so we can only guess that he will be able to adapt to life on Midway. I got into my first long-winded, alcohol-fueled political discussion with one of the ex-military Republicans here, which of course turned into conversations about jobs, girls and life in general. Good times.

So there is the March edition of Birding Magazine sitting in front of me here. I don't know whose it is or how it got here, but let's take a look at it. The front page is a photo collage of Empidonax flycatchers. For the uninitiated, they are a bunch of small, unremarkable looking brownish-green songbirds that all look exactly alike. I'm sure this stimulating cover will make this issue just fly off the shelves. On second thought, I think its best to not open it right now.



Red-footed Booby and Laysan Albatross on their morning commute.

John and Leona Klavitter, both biologists, returned last week from their Guam sojourn, and with Jimmy The Duck Jedi's arrival, it's starting to feel like a real wildlife refuge around here. Gary and I doing almost all the biological work out here for the past month has been fun, but its good to have some fellow biologists around...hopefully John will be able to direct me to some spots to check out the more obscure, hard to find birds that I haven't found yet (Tristram's Storm-Petrel, Bulwer's Petrel, etc.). If I can gather enough ambition I may try to apply for another job tonight, but this remains to be seen.

Well I'm low on inspiration today I guess. I will end this post with mentioning that while banding a Black-footed Albatross chick last week, it farted. I honestly had no idea birds farted.....I thought that while standing alone in a field of albatross a month ago, I heard a tell-tale fart sound, but this phenomenon has not been proven until last week. Amazing.



One of the few Masked Boobies on Eastern Island, on their favorite log.