Enter Sandman

It's an obvious statement to make: "I have been afforded the opportunity to see, work with, and interact with birds very few people encounter at far distances, much less the close proximity I've enjoyed."

The Noddies are allied with the terns. Open ocean birds, these guys perhaps got their names from the up and down movement of their heads during courtship ritual. Smaller, but seabirds still, these guys can live for decades and generally have a lifetime mate.

You saw the number of Black Noddies (Anous minutus) we have on this little island on a previous post about Christmas Bird Count. Brown Noddies (Anous stolidus) are here in greater numbers in the spring and summer. Many of them are out at sea at the moment. We had some for the Christmas bird count though.

During my first month here, we took the S.A.F.E. boat out to the outer islands to conduct surveys. The picture on the right was taken while out at East Island. It is the only other vegetated islet in the atoll.

While we were out there we ventured to La Perouse Pinnacle. That ancient remnant of a volcano, the leftovers of when the emmergent lands where French Frigate Shoals atoll is today was as large as O'ahu.

One reason we ventured to La Perouse was just to see the monolithic rock up close.

It is seven miles to the south of Tern I. You can see it in the background of many of my pictures. You can see it in the picture, of the Laysan Albatross(Diomedea immutabilis) on the sand looking outward, behind the title of my blog.

Another reason was we wanted to take the opportunity, while being out, to snorkel around that area.

A third, we needed to complete our outer island bird census. La Perouse Pinnacle (LPP) isn't exactly an island, I suppose, but it does support birds that prefer rocky tops, cliffs, and side crevaces to breed and raise their young. In particular there where many Brown Boobies(Sula leucogastar) and White Terns(Gygis alba). Also a few Gray-backed Terns(Sterna lunata).A final reason to get out there was that this was the place where they had last seen the Grey Noddy (Procelsterna cerulea). There exist two color phases to this species; a dark morph and a light morph. In fact, we were told and had read as well that from a distance the light morph Grey Noddy can look quite similar to a White Tern. There were plenty of White Terns hanging out in the crevaces of LPP.

So throughout the following months a not quite joke had been "hey, I saw a light morph Grey Noddy" and similar tongue-in-cheek remarks. We had pretty much given up on this particular bird species. If it wasn't seen on our trip to outer islands and particularly LPP, the latter of which we circled many times, then we just weren't going to see this guy. It became quite the enigma.

In fact, it mostly faded away from our minds. This enigmatic species, this myth of the FFS, we just aren't going to see it. And there's a good chance I won't be anywhere on this earth again where this ever growing, yet fading, phantasm is supposed to exist. Oh well. It's been incredible anyways. There's always the next life.

A very quick synopsis about this bird, the Grey Noddy, this ghost becoming less believable as the calender turns ever more quickly toward January 3rd and my flight off Tern.

Per Seabirds of the World: A photographic guide, by Peter Harrison.
HABITS: Small size and soft grey plumage imparts distinctive appearance; flight graceful and buoyant; occasionally paddles on water. *yeah, yeah, yeah*
Back to Harrison:
Breeds singly or in small loose colonies; sedentary.

*This "breeds singly" I find odd wording(?), or just odd. I've yet to come across a member of the Aves to be asexual, that is reproduction involving a single individual without male or female gametes. This bird reproduces by way of fission? Ofcourse, that's not the case.
"..or is small loose colonies; sedentary..." that is a different behavioral type for a species given a common name of noddy. But I can believe it; for where are they?

Harrison: DISTRIBUTION: Tropical and subtropical Pacific, breeds from HI Is south to Easter and Kermadec Is; egg-dates vary with location.

*So the particular lat-long that I am in the cross-hairs of is pretty much the northern reaches of its range. I suppose...

Back to last night/early this morning.
I get a knock on my door around midnight. It doesn't do much good to tell a co-worker to "get the hell out of here" when he, too, is on this 30-acre speck of sand on the Blue Marble. So, I get up, and then hear the reason of his persistant, and polite I should add, rapping at my door.

"I think I have a sleeping Grey Noddy on my window sill," I hear from the other side. I bolt out of bed and grab my camera.

We gathered a couple of other interested co-workers and tip-toe in the dark, back to his room and to the full-moon lit window sill. We come upon this:


This co-worker leaves his window open with the screen off. He has the left overs of roosting White Terns on the other window. In his defense, you never know what might be looking for a roosting spot in the night out here in the remote of the remote.

Perhaps it attracted by the roosting access at the end of what ever travels it is taking. Maybe attracted to the equally gray in color atheletic tube socks; its hard to find a friend sometimes. This co-worker is a cross-country and marathon runner, so let's cut him some slack on drying once white tube socks on his window ledge.

At ~ 0000 hrs, this was the sight:


Enigma revealed. A gift, when I needed no other. A wide smile when I already had one. Is there a message to this little story? I suppose there are a few. Glean what you want from it.

I'm just going to continue to persist. Continue to persevere with determination. I will continue to look up at times. Always looking outward.

"Another Festivus Miracle !" - Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld

Good morning.

-mwyork