View from my window.

I’ve been home a little while now and I find myself wishing I could go to the atoll at the drop of a hat. Thank goodness that’s not possible because too many people would do that and it would loose its wonderment. It was raining most of the last day. Just as I was about to pack up my camera and go out for some last minute shooting, the bottom fell out of the bucket and it never really stopped. It was pouring rain when we had to go to Captain Brook’s to wait for our departure and it just didn’t stop. It was still pouring when we got on the plane. There were only 6 of us going back to the real world, 3 wives and 3 counters. We all had seats to ourselves. No sharing rows was necessary. This afforded me the opportunity to reflect on my visit to Midway and probably the largest albatross colony in the world.

Getting up off the water.

If you have never seen an albatross, you probably could never imagine what it is like to be in a huge colony. Life on Midway, 8 months out of year, is filled with albatross life, their sounds, their dances, their nest building, their curious looks at everyone that passes them. You interact with them whether you want to or not. I do. I talk to them and I sometimes even dance with them. That’ll really get you a curious look. As I feel the wheels of our plane speeding down the runway, I realize that I am leaving the colony that I have been a member of for 2 weeks. The tears stream down my cheeks.

The numbers are up this year. And we get to add a new species to our count. The Laysan nest numbered 482,909. This is up 13% from last year. The Black Footed count is 28,581, up 20.5%. The biggest news is that there is a Short Tailed Albatross nest this year. This is the first time in recorded history that the Short Tail has nested outside of Japanese water. The chick hatched out on January 14. May he/she live long and prosper in this colony of the albatrosses.

Female Short Tailed Albatross on nest by USFWS volunteer Sarah Gutowsky, Midway, 12/1/10

Male displays the egg. USFWS J Klavitter, Nov 2010, Eastern Island, Midway Atoll NWR

Eastern's colony with what remains of WWII.

The Guys and Doll team. l-r David, Joe, Mike, me, Richard, Gary.

Two monk seals napping.

Laysan Ducks resting at puddle edge on the main road "in town."

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,100 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 18 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 45 posts. There were 144 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 250mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was January 18th with 150 views. The most popular post that day was Just a little Spit and we are done!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mail.yahoo.com, mail.live.com, dragonhousestudios.com, facebook.com, and WordPress Dashboard.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for canary bird, yellow canary, canary, yellow canary bird, and rusty bucket.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Just a little Spit and we are done! January 2010
1 comment

Free as a bird day. January 2010
2 comments

I’m not a teenager any more. December 2010
2 comments

The aMAZING sector known as 1. January 2010
3 comments

Down… BUT not out for the count December 2010
1 comment

Pacific Golden Plover wandering among the albatross

Since I’m a little gimpy, I was given a flat and relatively burrow free sector to count all by myself. I started it yesterday and I thought I had put a pretty good chunk of work into it yesterday and that I might finish early today. Not so fast there young lady. That road that you think is the end of the sector is not the end of the sector and those buildings don’t cover as much ground as you think. So I used the divide and conquer method. I keep making different rectangles to fill in all the spots in between the buildings. The sector was almost square, but it had a notch in one corner. The buildings were all different sizes, some being used and some falling down. There are a bunch of roads that cross through the sector and some that just connect to roads in the sector. Are you confused yet? I was, but I just kept filling all the squares in with orange dots beside the nest and the next thing I knew I was done at 4:15. So much for finishing early. And I did finish. There are 5819 total nests.

Non-native Canary

Yes, the water really is that color.

Weary Bonin Petrel

Counting on my own again today in the sector that has FWS offices, the Water Plant, and the Empire Cafe, site of all paint loading. It’s a pretty sector that is flat with a citrus grove. There are lots of ironwood and other trees that provide good nest building material and root structures that act like walls. Like almost all sectors, this one has borrows. Now the first rule about burrows is don’t step on them. The second rule is you still have to count the nest so good luck on the first rule. The third rule is that you have to dig out all burrows you crush. Sometimes you step on the hallway, other times you step right into the bedroom. Today I hit a bedroom. So I get down on hands and knees and start digging out. As I dig more falls in. It was one of the softest sand burrows I have encountered. I was digging pretty deep and all of a sudden I hear a low groaning call. I dig faster. More sand caves in. I dig frantically. The only way I can tell I’m on the right track is when the groaning call starts to get a little louder. I’m digging hard at this sand not knowing how long this little guy is going to hold out and how far down he is. I finally find his head. Ok, he can breath now. Now I have to get him out without hurting his wings. All of a sudden, he out and looking rather frustrated and confused. I can understand because he was probably asleep when all this happened. Thank goodness he kept making fussy noises so that I could find him. He wandered around for awhile wondering why his burrow had this huge hole in it now and what should he do about it. I left him to figure that out on his own.

Bristle Thighed Curlew

Love birds.

A different kind of burrow, downstairs mouse neighbor.

Ruddy Turnstones.

Hybrid

Hibiscus

Susan Scott

Being alone with the birds is a wonderful opportunity. I got to stop and look at things I might not have been able to enjoy otherwise. I flushed up a black noddy that I might have missed otherwise. Watched a pair of Black Footed Albatross dance and another pair switch off the egg, one eagerly, one reluctantly. I got to enjoy the cooked lunch today instead of a cheese sandwich, although, I’m not sure it was a better trade off than the location where my teammates were eating. When I filled out my count sheet, I just put Doll in for my team name. I got to think. I got to make decisions. The biggest decision I made today was to give a friend my last week here. Susan had gotten to come at the last minute but only for the first 2 weeks. I was scheduled for the full 3 weeks and the fight home on 1/6/11 is full. The only way Susan could stay was if someone got off that flight. I decided that an extra 100 miles on my ankle at this time was not the best for me and Susan will make a fine replacement. So I’ll be home for New Year.

Monk seal enjoying the sun at Rusty Bucket.

Incoming.

One of the little guys that is always digging holes in the ground, Bonin Petrel.

You can’t order them any better. It was sunny with a nice breeze that kept you cool and we stayed close to home counting today. On Sunday’s the first meal is brunch which starts at 9:30. We start counting at 8:00, so you have to save something from the night before or go hungry. I had a little saved from the Christmas brunch. We break for brunch and then pack a plate for lunch later in our rooms. Works out nicely and it breaks up the day a little more. Nothing else real eventful today, but the weather was well worth talking about on the blog. Just glorious!

The view from my room, Clipper House in the distant middle, and the lagoon.

Duckers in our count sector.

Another beautiful hybrid. Note the light gray feet.

Progress

More progress.

Nesting Masked Booby

The weather was perfect for a return trip to Eastern today. It was sunny and warm all day. Pretty good for counting if you have plenty of water and a bandana to shade your neck. Sector 4 on Eastern is pretty wide open with runways for borders. The runways are slowly disappearing with plants growing from every little crack and crevice. Mother nature will soon cover all evidence of military efforts on this island. The other sides of the sector are beaches. I saw a life bird today, the Masked Booby. Also saw a Lesser Frigate bird and 2 silver back Laysan Albatross. These albatrosses probably just have less melanin and therefore their feathers show as a silvery gray instead of the normal warm brown gray. These birds are absolutely gorgeous. There were 4 huge Monk Seals and 2 yearlings on our sector edge ocean side also. They always look like they are having the greatest naps.

The old cutting the monk seal in half trick.

I guess that's comfortable.

Sea wall at Eastern's dock.

Island communications. There was a hazard that only the counters seemed to be able to find and Richard was taking GPS marks for future repairs.

The view from our luncheon area under the naupaka. That is sand island in the distance.

Banded silverback on nest.

Clipper House Christmas eve night.

Christmas eve starts with a typical dinner and continues with a party at the All Hands Club. Santa shows up and the gift exchange starts. Now this gift exchange process is always an interesting one. The Thais seem to go for the liquor and the visitors go for the glass balls. There are a lot fewer Thais on island this year. They all get a six week vacation every other year to go see their families. They are very proud of their families and their ability to provide a good living for them. Anyway, there were fewer bottles of Jack Daniel’s and fewer glass balls under the tree this year. Of course, the glass balls were stolen twice and most of the Jack Daniel’s went to Thais. I brought a T-shirt from the Piggly Wiggly in Ducktown, TN for my gift. It got opened close to the end and was stolen by the last person to get to pick a gift. This actually made Santa pretty mad because he had wanted that gift. T-shirts seemed to be the big gift this year. I think the Thais were excited to be able to add to their wardrobe with something from off the island. The swap took about 2 hours and was lots of fun. You just never know what you are going to end up with. I got a Craftsman Ratcheting Ready-Bit Screwdriver. At least it’s useful and small for easy packing.

Let the gift exchange begin.

Santa and elves getting into the holiday spirit.

Just what every girl wants.

A view of what we were calling the Great Water in sector 38. What look like land is just the water's surface.

It was a rainy, muggy morning and we started right back in the trenches getting our feet soaked before we even started counting. We had just enough rain to wear our gear and not enough to help us stay cool. Very little breeze to be had. We had left this sector early yesterday because of the stinging rain. Today we were able to conquer the sector we had already divided. It’s tough when the rain almost obliterates your paint marks. Took a few minutes to find the marks but we did. It was nice to see that what looked like a huge task yesterday was really not that big today. So we got the end of the sector closed out, but then there was another chunk in the middle of the woods that the Great Water had keep us from reaching. We marched back into the woods and found our paint and started to count. Probably the most exciting words uttered in that sector today was found paint. We finally closed 38.

Where’s Waldo, as so known as 34, sector was the next one we tackled. It’s a big sector with a very high density of birds. Most of the sector is wide open which does make for an easier count. Our total count for sector 34 was over 20,000 nest. We closed out a little after 4:00 and headed for the showers. Well, some of us did. The rest took advantage of the great weather and did bird watching and photo taking. I, personally, needed some down time, so I took it.

I got to walk the beach to check the naupaka edge. As I was looking under and through bushes, I suddenly glanced back at the beach and there it was, a large glass ball. It’s quite a nice ball and a lot more portable than the one I found last year which was larger that a basketball.

Young Short Tailed Albatross waiting for a girl to show up.

Since we were so close to the Short Tailed Albatross’ area, we rode up to look for it. We’re riding along and I looked over at what I thought was a really unique hybrid when I suddenly realized it was the short tail preening itself. We had to get past it pretty quickly because it was sitting right on the road edge. Its plumage is almost to the full adult stage. Kind of at an awkward teen age stage. Next year it will probably have its full adult plumage. See how much bigger it is than the Black Footed Albatross to the right. Black foots are a little larger than Laysan.

After lunch we started a new sector that it sort of like a wet land area and when it’s been raining there is no sorta about it. It started to drizzle. No big deal. But of course, the further away from you pack where your rain gear is the harder it starts to rain. So by the time we get back close to our packs, I don’t really see any need to put my coat on. But as we continue to count, we start crossing through sedge grass that is super think, but not thick enough to keep us from sinking into water half way up our calves. And the rain just wouldn’t let up. At 3:10 in the afternoon, as the wind is blowing so hard that the rain drops are stinging you skin, we decided to bag it. Nothing was dry, not even my pack. Today’s hot show felt great.

When I got here there weren’t enough rooms for everybody and my room smelled like an ash tray. So 4 of us moved into a house that had been recently refurbished. I ended up in the sunroom with a single bed and lots of floor space. Beth Flint generously offered her other bed. We’ve had quite a pleasant stay together, but today I finally got my own room as did the ladies over at the house. Now we are all in Charlie Barracks. I’ve had fun settling in.

Full moon setting over Eastern Island courtesy Beth Flint, USFWS