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.