Pictures of boobies

The blog post title is just a shameless ploy to get people interested in my blog.  Apparently one of the previous volunteers suddenly got 4,000 hits in one day on his blog that usually only got a hundred or so and it was because he had posted pictures of brown boobies and so he got all this traffic from people searching for brown boobies and were probably very disappointed with the results. The boobies are mainly on Eastern Island and we don't get to go over there that often.  There are three islands that make up the atoll: Sand Island, Eastern Island and Spit Island.  I've never been on Spit Island.  I'm hoping it is more enchanting than its name implies.  

For the first few days here I did not even know that the island I was on was not called Midway Island.  Apparently I did not do my research.  Midway Island is a misnomer and it's actually called Midway Atoll and I live on Sand Island (which is more enchanting than its name implies).  Apparently Sand, Eastern and Spit aren't technically even islands they are islets but really, who cares...

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Sand Island is 1,200 acres-3 square miles.  The dark blue parts of the water in the atoll are where the military dredged to make a channel and harbor for the boats. It is one of the most remote places on earth and it's the last place to see the sun set.  The red dot is approximately where our volunteer house is located. The population ranges from about 50 -100 people. When the military was here they had about 5,000 people which completely boggles the mind because when a tour group of just 18 people comes in it makes the island feel crowded. 

The boat ride to get to Eastern is fun and many times people will see spinner dolphins on the way there or back.  I have yet to see them but I've been told they show up right before or after I had just been there.  They are totally taunting me.  

There's a very cute little seal that likes to hang out at the dock on Eastern to say hello, which is nice because otherwise you can't really see seals close up since they are endangered and we can't get closer than 150ft.  The seals don't know about the 150ft rule and even if they did they are total anarchists and don't ever follow the rules.

 

The Hawaiian name for monk seals translates to "dog that runs in rough waters".  They are considered a "living fossil"because fossil records show they've been around for 15 million years and they may be the ancestors to all other seals.  I very much want to hug them. 

 Here's the pictures of boobies that you've been eagerly waiting to see.

Red footed booby doing a little dance.

 A frigate bird and booby had a staring contest. 

The frigate won.

Here comes the rain again

I haven't posted in a while because we've been kinda busy and the Kahana came back for a bit which meant the tequila shots also returned, plus we had beautiful weather the last two weekends so I never made it to the office to get on the computer like I usually do.  This weekend it's raining and so I can catch up with emails and whatnot.  I also don't mind the rain because I still find the soggy chicks hilariously cute.

                                                                           Seriously...

Fuzz ball

Look how much fun it is to dig out a petrel hole if you accidentally step on a burrow. 

You really have to dig down deep because you don't want to just assume it's an old burrow and bury a petrel and now the baby chicks could potentially be in there so it's even more important since the adults might have a chance to dig themselves out but these little dust bunny impersonators definitely wouldn't be able to. 

This little guy was from a petrel burrow that was stepped on and had to be dug out.  So cute and ridiculous with its lil' dirty face.  The chick without all the fuzz is probably 1/20th the size.  I didn't have my camera but thankfully another volunteer, Laura Marie, was kind enough to share the picture since we may not see these guys until they start getting curious and peaking out of their burrows but by then they probably won't be as fuzzy.  

Critters

Someone asked me what other kinds of animals are here besides birds and I'm sure there are some but mainly all you see are birds.  Here are a few of the other animals I have managed to see behind all the birds-mostly they are sea creatures.  There are mice here too but they aren't as photogenic.  There used to be rats  and they drastically brought down the bird numbers and so a big eradication program was started and I think it took something like four years to kill all the rats.  My boss has a desiccated rat in a zip-lock bag marked as the last rat on the island hanging on his wall. Fun trophy.

 Monk seals are endangered and so we can only get within 150ft or 300ft if they are with pup since they need to rest and you don't want to scare them back into the water where the sharks can get them.

The turtles are also endangered but they like to swim under one of the piers so we can see them fairly often.  They also like to hang out at the aptly named Turtle Beach.

 This was dead but still pretty 

Manta Rays!

Doing somersaults.

 Portuguese Man of War

 Dead crab and sea urchin hanging out in their afterlife.

Fellow volunteers.

Sunrise

I was trying to get a nice picture of the dead tree and sunrise and yet still ended up with gooney.

Duh...

 

"Aircraft have the right of way"  Seriously?  What prompted the necessity of this sign?

I guess you can never be too safe with men and their love of urinal water.

The store

There is a store on island which is open one hour a day and has an odd assortment of stuff.  There's a whole section of Axe body spray products...odd.  There are 20 different kinds of shampoos for every type of hair in all kinds of scents and yet only 2 different kinds of conditioner--why?  The prices are fairly cheap, cheaper than New York.  Considering they have to ship everything out here I would have expected things to be a little more pricey.  Had I known it was cheaper I would have just bought all my toiletries here.

The largest section of stuff is the beer cooler and the liquor selection.  It's not a massive selection but it's pretty well stocked.  They even have three bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue at $210 each.  I don't know who's buying that.

Curiouser and curiouser

The gooney birds can be so curious, often coming over to check out what you are doing and then walking away once they realize it's not something that interesting.  This one nibbled my finger a bit to see what that was.  Like sharks they have to test things with their mouth, unlike sharks you generally won't lose your life from an albatross trying to figure out what you're all about.  If they are really trying to snap at you then I'm sure it'd hurt more than just when they are being nosy.

Eats

I previously mentioned that the schedules all revolve around when food is served and some people wondered what the food is like and it varies daily.  Breakfasts are all pretty much the same there's a selection of small boxes of cereal, different (usually canned) fruits, various toasts or breads, eggs and sausages, a make your own waffle station and luckily there's coffee all day. 

 

This is an old picture from one of the other volunteers of Nik getting coffee but you can see the cereal/ fruit bar  behind him.  At lunch and dinner that becomes a salad bar.  Then there's another buffet line of hot food which varies daily and they post a weekly menu so you can look forward to certain things like veggie burger day. :)  If they don't have a vegetarian option they make a separate vegetarian dish (usually a vegetable tofu noodle dish) for those of us non meat eaters. 

The food here is all pretty good.  The kitchen are all Thai guys so there are always good Thai dishes.  They tried to do Mexican yesterday and it was close.  There's an unnecessary amount of desserts too.  One of the volunteers, RJ, is so funny when it comes to meals because he'll first sit down with a very sparse plate but he'll go back at least 4 times for more things and pile up a stack of dirty plates.  I don't know why he doesn't get it all in the first pass.  I think he was tying to be sneaky about it and he had a few people fooled thinking he didn't eat much until I pointed out that he made 4-7 trips back to the buffet and so his cover was blown.  On his 2nd trip back he usually gets cookies as part of his meal for every meal and then at the end he has a real dessert as well.  He's funny.  Good thing his hobby is exercise. 

Sand blasted

It's been incredibly windy here which makes it so hard to bike everywhere.  The winds have been so strong in places that we end up having to just get off and walk because it's like biking against a brick wall.  I think the winds have gotten up to 40 or so mph but they can get up to 80mph and I'm not sure how we are going to bike in that.  We've all been a little more exhausted lately due to fighting the winds.  But the chicks by the beach have had it way worse.  Poor little things.   We even saw an adult albatross get blown into a tree and then fall almost at our feet and die within minutes since it broke it's neck.  Crazy. 

Hatches

Here's a few abandoned military things that we found around the island.

An old explosives bunker or something. 

 

Another bunker that now houses stuff for sick birds.

Really sick birds apparently. 

And of course, even in abandoned bunkers you can still find an albatross.

We discovered this in the middle of a forested area.  I figured it was the Stonehenge of Midway but apparently it used to be what the big guns sat on.  A mysterious Stonehenge is much more fun though so I'm going to pretend I didn't find out what it really was.

Night terrors

Aside from the million plus albatrosses on the island there are a ton of other ridiculous birds here.  One of the most ridiculous being the Bonin Petrel.  

There are an estimated 800,000 to a million of them here.  I'm not really sure how all this biomass fits on this small island.  They come out at night and when you look up at dusk they kind of look like bats swarming all around yet bigger.  The petrels create a few challenges.  One being that they nest in burrows that they dig out so when you are walking you have to make sure not to step on the burrow and collapse it potentially stepping on the bird and egg or collapse it and bury the bird.  If you happen to collapse a burrow you have to dig it out and make sure the bird's okay and can get out.  Sometimes you'll be digging out the burrow and feeling around for the bird further down and it'll bite your finger, which is nice since it lets you know the bird is okay--ungrateful for your concern, but okay.  Sometimes it's just an empty historic nest from a previous year just waiting for you to collapse it and twist your ankle in the hole.  The abandoned ones are better though because every time you collapse a burrow the bird could abandon the egg.

Most places we work are like a minefield of petrel holes and so it makes everything we do that much harder trying to walk around petrel holes and then digging out ones we accidentally collapse.  The second that I feel the ground start to go soft a sense of dread washes over me because I know I'm about to fall through.  Then I just have to hope that I don't land on the bird and nest.

Generally it is safe to walk near the entrance to the burrow but if the entrance to one is near the back of another then you end up collapsing the other.  And sometimes the entrances are kinda hidden and all the sudden you're shin deep in a petrel burrow.  Annoying.  Luckily I've never stepped right on the nest or bird but another volunteer collapsed a burrow and stepped right on the bird and broke the egg.  Sad.
Another thing about petrels is that they are confused by light so we have to keep all shades drawn at night because if you have a light on they'll end up flying into the window.  Especially when there's a new moon and it's completely dark outside then the light coming through my shades must still be too bright so I can't even read at night or I'll end up hearing random thumps of birds flying into the window.  It also makes biking at night with a headlamp on even more hazardous since they'll fly right at you.  I've gotten a face full of petrel a few times.  Luckily they're really soft and don't seem to be injured by it and just feel like a powder puff when they hit you.  I think they drink all day and come out of their burrows so trashed they don't know what they're doing.  Science gives the excuse that it's because they feed at night on bioluminescent deep sea animals that come to the surface at night so they may be attracted to and/or confused by the light and that their eyes contain high levels of the pigment rhodopsin which aids nocturnal vision and so may make light extra bright and confusing but I don't think that explains all of their drunken antics.
The really creepy thing about them though is that they make this weird throaty shriek which would be fine except when you are woken up to that sound along with a bit of thumping on the window and then scraping of claws against the sliding glass door.  Even though I know what it is it's still mildly frightening to wake up in the pitch black to the sound of strangled screams, scratching on the glass door and random knocks...usually in the movies those are the sound cues for your impending slaughter.  I've discovered that if I just get up open the door and turn it around then it'll drunkenly waddle off in the other direction but if I don't it'll just keep making the scary noises all night.  They are quite odd.