"Tube Noses"

Birds of this Order include albatrosses (the LARGEST o' the tubenoses, and we will have them here in mid-October), petrels and shearwaters, storm-petrels, diving petrels. All have external nostrils placed in tubes on top or sides of the upper mandible. They have a highly developed nasal sense organ. **correct me if I'm somewhat wrong, or completely wrong with this next sentence..my ornithologically-inclined friends, as I have grown up a dry lander and am here to learn of much newness ;-)...** They are also able to extract, and then expel, salt from the saltwater with this adaptation.


Pardon? Yep, tube noses. Thats a common name for birds of the Order Procellariiformes
Wedge-tailed Shearwater(Puffinus pacificus)

One family I have pictures of is the Family Procellariidae, Shearwaters and petrels. These are medium-sized birds pelagic birds distributed thoughout the oceans of the world. Usually seen in flight so close to the water that they momentarily disappear behind the waves.....


Bulwer's Petrel(Bulweria bulwerii), a very small and cool bird...this guy is about as small as a petrel can get before they start calling you a ______ storm-petrel. *being adorned with a leg band by MWyork, btw.*

....Birds of this family nest mostly on remote oceanic islands, and often are nocturnal and on the breeding grounds. They nest here. Bulwer's Petrel, a tough bird to find, and not many. We have banded 2 "chicks", a third awaits, and have found one Adult in a crevice in a rock seawall. The guy you see pictured, that I banded, didn't have any down left on him, and so wouldn't call it a chick I suppose. In fact, lucky this one wasn't gone. The Bulwer's Petrel will actually fledge (can leave its nest [burrow, crevice, whatever the spp. uses] on its own. Kind of like "departure day") while it still has down. That has been documented in the past. Seeing a BUPE at sea, while still sporting some down. How about that? Interesting among Aves.

This Family is little known, relatively speaking, difficult to study and often difficult to ID.

The Wedge-tailed Shearwater, pictured first, are all over this island right now. Lots of burrows. It's akin to "walking on eggshells" on some of my Black Noddy plots due to the "wedgie" burrows. If we cave one in, which does happen from time to time, we quickly dig and dig and dig it out. It works out fine, for the most part...


Wedge-tailed Shearwater(P.pacificus) chick. We'll be banding a whole lot of these guys soon. A whole lot. They can can be, shall we say, a bit "nippy."

... Any bird that spends it's life season to season over open ocean, and the only land it visits are remote island either just north or south of the equator depending on seasons is quite interesting in my book. Because either they have a cool story behind their species, or their story is little-understood. Such as this bird.....


Christmas Shearwater(P.nativitatis)

... the smallest of all-dark shearwaters(Wedge-tailed SW's do have a dark morph). It breeds in the NW CHAIN and islets off O'ahu and Molokai.

Here at Tern Island, we do expect three more "tube-nose" species; The Tristram's(Sooty) Storm-Petrel(Oceanodroma tristrami), Black-footed Albatross(Diomedea nigripes), and the Laysan Albatross(D.immutabilis).

I look forward to all species, but the albatross spp. especially. I have pulled hummingbirds out of mist nets, and now I will be grabbing hold of albatross to band and help continue a mark-recapture program for the two albatross spp. Again, these guys will come back in mid-October.

Finally, often times I get up just before the sun is up, yet dimly lighted outside. For the evening, some stay up a while and watch a video or play games, etc. I tend to head towards bed not far after the sun goes down, and black night is upon us. There is no electricity in my room.

We are afforded sources of illumination such as oil lamps, any candles to be found, etc. I read for a little while, but generally get sleepy with the rest of the island outside these walls.

So I leave you with another picture of Tern Island, and it's diurnal life-force, blowing out the flame.

"Always two, there are.."

"..A Master and an Apprentice"

White Tern (Gygis alba)with chick


Black Noddy (Anous minutus)with chick
*this is the species I specifically work with, monitoring plots every other day to determine reproductive success*


Brown Noddy(Anous stolidus)with chick


Great Frigatebird (Fregata minor), with young not quite fledged. These long lived birds go through a myriad of stages, both as young "nestlings", and fledglings with several "sub-adult stages."

Dia uno, Outer Island surveys

Today was the first of 2 days of conducting outer island(those of this atoll, FFS)bird surveys.



French Frigate Shoals Atoll, Tern I. is up north

The first spot we went to were "the Gins." There is Little Gin and Big Gin, little Gin is actually bigger than Big Gin, but Little Gin looks to have water cutting through it so maybe it isn't bigger.....Confused? Folks, these are basically tiny sand bars and at times they are a-changin'. Oh, and lots of blue all around.
Some birds as I recall, Brown Noddys, a Black Noddy flyover, Ruddy Turnstones, and some seals.

We then motored over to East Island. East Island is where NOAA or NMFS or some government acronym has set up "turtle cam." Don't know where one can tune into turtle cam, or if one can. But it is there. East, like a very small Tern Island. Some vegetation. Sand and dead coral, glass and plastice ocean trash from all over the Pacific Rim. Anyone lose a plastic lighter, or a whisky bottle written in Japanese? I may have found it.



our ride..the safeboat anchored at East Island

SGTMaj.(Ret.)MWYork, this ship probably isn't as large as the ones you guys road on out here. Industuctable craft though, and I could feel every wave. I'm still feeling it as I type this.

On East I., we did another full avian species survey, and due to vegetation there were a few more to see. Great Frigatebirds, Masked Boobys, Red-footed Boobys, Ruddy Turnstones, Pacific Golden-Plovers, both Brown and Black Noddys, even a couple of Gray-backed Terns, one of which was on an egg....



Myself and a co-worker stumbled upon a hatchling HI Green Sea Turtle just out of the sand in the bottom of a pit, or nest really. It takes them 2-3 days, I think I've said, after hatching to dig themselves up. Well one turtle turned into two, three, 24, 45, 62 and finally it was 63 little sea turtles we dug out. We each picked up three or four, sent them on their difficult watery journey in this life. We decided to run to get our cameras and run back to this pile of 60 sea turtles. Well, the hatchlings came to realize they were out of the sand and now it is go-like-heck time. Those suckers were scooting all over that part of the island. Think of one of those big skyrocket fireworks on the 4th of July. The little orange, pin-point tracer that shoots into the air....that's our pile of sea turtle hatchling. Now thing of the full-blossom firework post-explosion....that's our pile of sea turtle hatchlings upon returning with camera.

I don't have pics. A co-worker took one of me, and I'll receive it at some point. We were busy forming a large perimeter and scooping up as many turtle hatchlings as possible.

Whenever I find them on Tern, they have been out much of the night. They are tired, drying out, nearing an earliest of what might be an early fate anyhow.

But these guys where fresh out of the sand. Incredible difficult to grab a lot of. Wiggly little suckers, that active.


Great Frigatebird, doing what one rarely sees, unless on a remote isle..perching

We finished the days surveying at La Perouse Pinnacle. I believe you can find a picture of it on the sidebar to the right of the main postings, that one being from ABC and at sunset. This, the remains of an ancient volcano. It is just a rock, straight up from the ocean like the jagged toothe of what was once a fine set of pearly whites.

Here's a closer picture I took...


the white isn't snow

I have only seen La Perouse from Tern Island, about an inch high above the watery horizon. Ever present at my bedroom window, but just an inch.

We were allowed to snorkel around La Perouse. I took some pictures with a disposable underwater film cam. We'll see how anything turns out. Lots of variables to work on at the time such as floating/swimming in the middle of the Pacific, next to this big rocks, riding the waves, trying to remember how to purge the saltwater out of my snorkel and mask...all the while turning this dial on the camera until I hear/feel a click. Ready to shoot, now. Put the viewfinder up to my slightly fogging-over now mask hoping to get a shot, ane what exposure am I on? Look up above the surface, where are my other snorkler's and the boat?? Ah...

It was fun. It was exhausting. And so, safely back on Tern I., I'll leave you with another picture of "Good Tired" and wish everyone happiness, safety, and health...

Red-footed Booby at sunset, Tern I.

...good evening.
Peace.

Go Bows.

So You're Saying There's A Chance..

Green Sea Turtle, Honu, (Chelonia mydas) hatchling

Honu is the Hawaiian name for the Hawaiian population of Green Sea Turtle, a threatened species.

One is likely to find them gliding around the ocean reefs or sleeping under ledges of lava rock and coral. Sometimes they sunbathe on coral heads or beaches.(Um, not this little guy pictured, though.)

Green turtles undertake incredible journeys to their place of birth, where they mate and nest. Almost all of the green sea turtles one sees around the main Hawaiian Islands, this birthplace is 500 to 800 miles away in the remote French Frigate Shoals, located in the NW'ern Hawaiian Island Chain.

Working together, tiny hatchlings dig upward to the surface of the sand, an effort that takes 2-3 days. They then immediately crawl to sea. A very large number of them become meals for crab, fish, and other cool stuff to see when snorkeling.

The surviving hatchlings subsist on plankton, jellyfish, and fish eggs floating near the surface of the open ocean.

Until Honu are 4-6 yrs old, its unknown exactly where the young turtles go.

It takes 25-40 years for Hawai'i's green sea turtles to reach sexual maturity in the wild.

____

Every day I come across sea turtle hatchlings. On the runway, in vegetation, on the water catchment concrete, about anywhere it seems. Some days I might find 4 or 5, another day 1 or 2. The hatchlings are turned around from where to go. They need water, they desicate (or dryout pretty crispy) quickly, particularly on warm and sunny days. It's not uncommon to come across many dead, dried out, and picked-at hatchling around the island.

It's also not uncommon to find a little guy either high-tailing it to God knows where, or just barely moving when picked up.

This guy in the pictures was somewhere in between that, and was found in the early evening. Late in the day to still have life in him.

Hatchling have a VERY tough chance to survive to adulthood out in the open water where they belong. But there's a chance...

This guy, along with a number of others (personally, maybe around 10 since I got here, I'm not sure) I have found around this 37 acre island, I put in the ocean. The odds are incredibly stacked against them. A story unto itself.

Like this guy the other evening, atleast they have a chance...





I hope all is well. Mayhaps, next post I'll show you the species of bird that I specifically monitor for reproductive success. It's called a Black Noddy.

Good early evening from French Frigate Shoals atoll.





mwyork

Interesting thing to have evolved of the oceans...

Red-Tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon rubricauda)

This amazing bird doesn't have much in the way of useful legs. It kind of mopes along like some zombie that has had its legs shot off in one of those video games that "aren't too voilent" for 3 yr olds.

So it looks extremely silly on land. It's legs are fairly small and don't hold it him up too well. It is a pelagic, and as such it spends most of its life over open ocean. It only comes to land, on islands of the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, to mate. What must that look like....I let your imaginations wander.

But give a seabird wind and here we go....



One more thing. Ole York snorkeled this afternoon. It was absolutely amazing. An entirely different world that I can't wait to visit again. The fish where so varied and beautiful. Didn't get a reef shark this time, but we will.

Once one learns how to breath only through your mouth, and get a bit of a rhythm going, it is learned fairly quickly. Atleast was for me. Just gotta go and do. No, we weren't meant to breath underwater and the brain knows it. But to view the tropical aqua life and coral reef through that mask, its a bit like taking a video camera and bootlegging a beautiful film you weren't meant to see. It seemed so to me. I had this strange feeling of "where am I?", "Is this okay?" Remarkable.

Also had a Hawaiian Monk Seal swim under me. These guys are critically endangered and hang out around here. I see them on the shore once in awhile. We are told to give them a wide berth when you come across one. Seals needs places to rest and sleep, and human disturbance could cause them to not use that beach. Here's a pic I took at a longer distance.


Hawaiian Monk Seals

Quickly, the cpu's here aren't the fastest and sometimes I am not able to do what I want. Some updates to this blog just dont happen, sometimes they do. A bit of a crap shoot. Also, we are down a cpu now. This is not a huge cpu lab anyhow. I wish I could update, and email people more often. So much to say to some of you.

Anyhow, we have our differences, Aves and Humans, but we live together here. Truly, we do. I am tired. But before I go, I leave you with one of my favorite shots I've taken.

Peace, love, aloha and mahalo,



.......pause for emphasis.......

BAM!


White Terns (Gygis alba)

1.20.09

-mwy

Good Tired

Great Frigatebird

Some have commented feeling a "good tired."

Many of you know what this means.

Due to current time constraints, I'll just show you what a "Good Tired" is, for me.

*See above photo*

Made it to Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals atoll

Just a quick update. Quick, because I am quite exhausted. I should have more energy on days off.

Just wanted to let everyone know I made it to Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals atoll.

*Disregard the pilots wearing crash helments*

This has already been quite an experience, and we just got here yesterday around luchtime.

Just 4 of us on 37 acres. The number of birds is lower this time of year. Only ~ 60 thousand birds at the moment.

Peace,love,and Maholo nui loa.