Women at work

It's not all messing about with birds here on Tern Island you know. There is lots of other work to be done as well. Manly work. Heavy lifting, operating machinery, sawing pieces of wood, that kind of thing. And since there has been a distinct shortage of menfolk on the island these last six months, it has fallen to us women to do all the hard labour (thanks to Caitie Kroeger for providing most of these photos):


Driving the tractor.


Pulling weeds.


Navigation.


Hammering stuff.


Toxic chemical application.


Lifting really big rocks.


Posing with power tools.


Actually using the power tools.


Notice how well this outfit co-ordinates with the power tool- a boy would not have thought to do this.

Moody boobies

It is very hard not to make smutty double entendres when you are dealing with boobies, and this is perhaps why masked boobies are so angry all the time. When you've just heard someone say "Look at that lovely pair of boobies!" and snigger for the 50th time you are bound to be a little cheesed off.

Masked boobies are the angriest birds of all time ever and breeding season brings out the worst in them. Around mid January the masked boobies start to pair off and stake out a little piece of ground on which they will lay their eggs. This patch is jealously guarded against all other creatures, particularly by the female boobies who are much louder and bossier than the males. If an unwary albatross ventures too close to the boobies' special area, the female starts honking loudly and indignantly at it, then will usually charge, causing the albatross to run away in terror. Unwary humans get the same treatment. The males, meanwhile, seem a little embarrased by this behaviour and will sheepishly bring up the rear producing nothing more than a faint asthmatic whistle. Border skirmishes between neighbouring pairs of masked boobies are frequent. These usually begin with two pairs of boobies facing off across the edge of their territory, the females shrieking at each other and the males whistling at each other. This squabbling quickly descends into outright violence, sometimes with other masked boobies joining in just for the hell of it. After a few minutes of vicious beak-wrestling everyone backs down and retreats a little, though still screaming insults at each other. It's a bit like the end of 'Wife Swap', when the two couples finally meet face to face.


If looks could kill- a masked booby.


Trouble brewing.


Trouble.

Masked boobies are another species that have dispensed with all that silly nest building nonsense and lay their eggs directly on the ground. Despite this, and perhaps in response to some ancestral impulse, the male masked booby will try to impress his wife by bringing her bits of nesting material. The female sits in the middle of the nesting area looking annoyed while the male runs around picking up tiny bits of twig or tiny pebbles and setting them down very, very gently and carefully in front of her. The females seem largely unimpressed by this activity, though they do sometimes pick up the tiny twigs and tiny pebbles and place them behind or to the side of themselves in a kind of nest building mime.

After a month or so of brutal fighting and delicate pebble moving, the female masked booby produces two white eggs. Life is tough for masked boobies right from the get-go. One egg hatches first, then when the second egg hatches the smaller chick is ejected from the nest and dies, so that it's older sibling will get all the food and attention. Thus the masked boobies have a kind of grim insurance policy- if one egg fails to hatch or gets broken, they have the other as a back up. If both hatch then the second chick becomes superfluous.


Mr. and Mrs. Masked Booby. The male (on the left) has yellower feet and bill.


A masked booby nest. Woe betide anyone who sets foot inside the circle.


Baby booby.


They grow up so fast.


Warning: do not attempt to cuddle.

Red-footed boobies also breed on Tern Island, and they are like the relaxed hippie cousins of the masked boobies. They are smaller, calmer and much less likely to rip your face off if you look at them funny. They build nests in the bushes like real birds and only lay one egg at a time, so there is no need for any of that messy infanticide. Red-foots pay the price for being Mr. Nice Booby though, and are constantly harrassed by their arch-nemesis, the frigatebirds, who steal their food and twigs.


A red-footed booby displaying.


Male red-foots have a greener bill than females.


Coming in to land.


A chip off the old block.

One of the projects I have been helping out with is putting satellite tags on both masked and red-footed boobies to find out which areas of the ocean they feed in. This involves a certain amount of grabbing masked boobies. Although they are smaller than albatross, they are extremely strong and have a bill like a vice, and their disposition is less than sunny as I have already mentioned. Grabbing boobies is therefore a little bit more daunting than grabbing albatross. On top of this, boobies have no external nostrils, so when holding them you have to keep their mouth open at all times but tucking your index finger in there. Heavily reinforced leather gloves and safety goggles are useful accessories for this task.

How to catch a masked booby.

1. Approach the booby, trying to appear nonchalent.

2. Once within striking distance of the razor-sharp bill, hold out your hand as 'bait'.

3. The booby will lunge at your hand and start trying to remove your fingers. It is important not to panic at this point.

4. With your free arm move the booby away from its eggs, gather up the wings and try to gain control of the bill before your hand is reduced to a bloody pulp.


Protective clothing is required for catching masked boobies.


Tagging a red-foot.


The satellite tag is attached to the booby's tail.


Caitie and Sarah take some booby vital statistics.


Ruth and Melinda flash their boobies for the camera.


Relaxing red-foots.


That hard to reach itch.

Written Tuesday 23rd February: Plane day

On the 22nd February a plane arrived on Tern Island from Honolulu, bringing exciting things like new people, bananas and an IT technician (thanks to whom you can now read these tedious ramblings).

Plane day actually began a few days before plane day, when we were set the task of hoeing the runway. Over time small plants root in the runway and spread out to form mats of weeds. These weed patches are slippery and on a previous plane day the plane skidded on a patch of greenery and burst one of its tyres, so now the plants must be removed before the plane lands. The runway is a kilometre in length and about 300 metres wide, and standing at one end of it clutching a tiny garden hoe the task seemed Herculean. The weather for those few days was murderously hot and still, and as we inched our way along the runway, bent double and scratching at every tiny blade of grass, I speculated that this must be what it feels like to work on a chain gang. Although I expect chain gang prisoners don't get to wear bikinis and listen to their iPod.


Pacific Air Charters flight 1 to Tern Island.

On the morning of plane day we got up early to prepare. First we had a safety briefing and were allotted specific tasks should there be an accident- two people to man the boat, one person to communicate with the outside world, one person to stand on the shore and point at where the plane hit the water. Unless the plane happens to crash on the island of course in which case all you need is one person to fetch the fire extinguisher. Then we got the boat ready to be launched in case of an accident. Then we started hazing the runway.


Testing the bird scaring equipment.

Having a runway on an island that is entirely covered in large birds has one obvious disadvantage- a high risk of birdstrike. Birdstrike is bad for the planes and pretty catastrophic for the bird as well. An albatross can leave a serious dent in a small aeroplane, or even worse, go through the windscreen and take out one of the pilots. The pilots wear crash helmets whilst taking off and landing for this reason. So to try and reduce the chance of a birdstrike, we spent a couple of hours before the plane was due to arrive hazing, or scaring birds off the runway. Although no birds nest on the runway some of them, particularly the albatrosses and masked boobies, like to loiter on it. These birds have to be chased away, and because the runway is quite large, a bicycle is used to expidite the process. Chasing albatrosses off a runway on a bicycle is a surreal experience, though quite a fun one. If the bicycle is not sufficient to scare the albatross, one must leap off it and chase the albatross on foot, shouting and clapping one's hands. The most truculent albatrosses have to be either picked up and moved or gently persuaded in the right direction with a foot. Needless to say, some of the albatrosses simply stroll back onto the runway a few minutes later and have to be chased all over again, but overall the process is fairly effective, and when the plane finally landed there were no birdstrikes at all.


An albatross inspects the plane...


...and is not impressed.

The plane left the next day, taking the IT technician with it but leaving the bananas and the new people. The new people are Dascha, Pete's wife who has recently completed her PhD and is volunteering on Tern until starting her real job in Washington DC, and Paula, the new assistant manager. This means there will be six of us manning (though perhaps that should be womanning, since there are now five girls and one boy) Tern until the next visit by a ship in late March.


Paula, the new assistant manager, is strict but fair.


Dr. Dascha.

99 red balloons

Frigatebirds are cool and they know it. Sleek, jet black, lots of sharp angles and an evil-looking hooked beak, they are the stealth bombers of the bird world. Groups of frigatebirds hover in the wind currents above Tern Island pretty much all the time, watching and waiting for other birds to arrive back from feeding trips. Then, like school bullies, they will chase and harass the smaller birds and steal their lunch. Frigatebirds are not particularly waterproof- a bit of a design flaw in a seabird if you ask me- which means that they do pretty much everything on the wing. This makes them superb aerial acrobats, able to swoop down out of the sky and pick a tiny twig up off the ground without stopping. Sometimes they swoop down out of the sky and bonk unwary humans on the head, just for the hell of it.


Frigatebirds circling overhead.


Too cool for school- a male frigatebird.


Armed and dangerous.

Come breeding season, however, male frigatebirds turn from supercool, sexy attack machines into a bunch of simpering dolts. The transformation begins around mid-January, when male frigatebirds gather on top of bushes where they can display to passing females. They start by developing long, irridescent blue-green feathers on the back of their necks. Once these feathers are nice and shimmery they inflate a large pouch of bright red skin under their chin. Some males keep the pouch inflated at all times, even though it must be an enormous hinderance to other activities like preening, eating and being able to see where they are going. The males then hang around in the bushes, fully inflated, until a female flies overhead at which point they raise the irridescent neck feathers, spread their wings and do a 'jazz-hands' motion with the wing tips, make a shrill warbling noise and vigorously waggle the red pouch from side to side. One assumes that female frigatebirds find this kind of behaviour tremendously alluring. Female biologists find it hilarious. The female frigates cruise around over the bushes checking out what is on offer, and their presence elicits a kind of Mexican wave of pouch waggling from the males below. The biggest pouch and the most enthusiastic waggling wins the fair lady.


Does my chin look big in this?


Taking a closer look.


Seriously, does my chin look big in this?


Success! A female shows some mild interest.

The female frigatebird eventually chooses a mate by landing next to him and looking slightly bored. At this point the male starts gathering twigs and bringing them back to the female, and together they fashion a ramshackle nest. Here again the frigates' aerial combat skills come to the fore, and they will steal twigs from other birds in daring mid-air battles, or smash-and-grab raids on unguarded nests. The most frequent victims of this behaviour are red-footed boobies, which nest in the same bushes as the frigates but are smaller and less aggressive. Although the frigates relentlessly persecute the boobies in the air, a kind of armistice seems to exist within each individual bush. Frigates and boobies build their nests only inches apart, but they rarely steal twigs from their immediate neighbours. That, it appears, would be bad form.


This frigatebird was very enthusiastic about his nest building.


Already belligerent, a frigate chick.


Mum and baby.


Exhausted after a hard reproductive season.

Don't worry, the bird in the above photo is not dead. Frigates go all out when they relax and can often be seem draped over a bush, wings and head completely limp, as though they can no longer be bothered to resist gravity. Another position they like to sit in is the meditative pose in the picture below. Don't ask me why.


Frigate yoga.


Preparing to roost after a hard days thievin'.

Terrifying American foodstuffs #3 and #4

From our store cupboard: Molly McButter's Fat Free Natural Butter Flavour Sprinkles and Bac'n'Pieces.

The ingredients list of Molly McButter's Fat Free Natural Butter Flavour Sprinkles reassuringly states that they contain 'natural butter flavour and other 100% natural flavours'.

Bac'n'Pieces are a soy-based alternative to bacon which, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, taste almost, but not quite, entirely unlike bacon. They make no claim to be natural.