So long, and thanks for all the fish oil.

The albatross chicks are getting ready to leave Tern Island, and so must I. Tomorrow the Kahana is arriving to take me back to Honolulu and my Tern Island adventure will be over. In a month or so the albatross chicks will all have fledged. Their adventure is just beginning.

I don't want to get overly sentimental or gushy at this stage so I will finish as I started, with a quote:

'Recently I travelled with albatrosses through much of their range, asking them to reveal their world. The fraction of their lives that I saw- and what it said of the life we share- tells a story of struggle and hope and the power of sheer resistance. They taught me much.'
Carl Safina

Terns of Tern Island

There is a reason why they call this place Tern Island of course. When I arrived here in December the only terns in evidence were the white terns, which breed here more or less the whole year round. Around mid-February two other species started to show up- the grey-backed terns, of which there are a few hundred, and the sooty terns, of which there are a few hundred thousand. Sooty terns quickly come to dominate the island through sheer weight of numbers, descending in a mad cloud to perform their noisy and frantic courtship, and then settling on any and every piece of ground to lay their eggs.


This is why they call it Tern Island.

Someone told me that white terns used to be called fairy terns but the name was changed because of the non-PC overtones of the word 'fairy'. I'm not sure this is true- surely the pink fairy armadillo would have received the same treatment by now if it were. Fairy tern seems much more appropriate for these charming little birds, which like to flutter around your head and have a really good look at you while you frantically try to snap photos of them.


Politically correct- a white tern.


This white tern caught a little fishy.

Like many seabirds, white terns have dispensed with all that silly nest-building nonsense and instead will lay their single, speckled egg in any spot where it will not immediately roll off. This might be in the forked branch of a bush or an appropriately positioned knot hole, but many white terns on Tern Island favour the barracks, where a narrow lip of concrete running round the edge of the building provides the perfect nursing ground for baby terns.


A white tern egg on the barracks wall.

Now if you thought the albatross chicks were cute then hold onto your hats- if Channel 4 ever made a TV show called 'The 100 Greatest Cute Baby Animals Ever' then white tern chicks would be in the number 1 spot every time. These tiny, speckled fluffballs hatch out onto their bare branch or concrete shelf and basically spend their first few weeks clinging on for dear life. As a result they have evolved disproportionately large feet. You could probably fit six or seven day-old white tern chicks comfortably into the palm of your hand, and together they would be cute enough to kill most average women at a distance of 50 paces.


All kinds of cute- a white tern chick.


Here's one next to a quarter (about the size of a 10p) for scale.


Pretty soon they turn into scruffy teenagers.

Grey-backed terns are rather noisier than white terns and for a while there was a group of them that liked to have a shrieking competition outside my bedroom window at about 3am every night. Grey-backed terns lay their eggs on the ground, preferring sandy and gravelly areas. Their eggs have sandy and gravelly coloured shells, making them practically invisible. When approached, grey-backed terns will abandon their egg and start running around in front of you, squawking and flapping their wings, to try and distract you from the whereabouts of the egg. This tactic works very well, so for large and clumsy humans like myself, walking through grey-backed tern nesting areas is a nerve-wracking experience.


A grey-backed tern.


A grey-backed tern chick doing a passable impression of a rock.


Grey-back in flight.

In terms of noise production, though, sooty terns are the hands down winners. Initially the sooties gather in flocks above the island- first a few, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of terns which form an enormous, boiling cloud in the sky with every bird screeching at every other bird. Over the course of a few weeks the tern cloud gets gradually closer and closer to the ground until eventually terns begin to land.The cloud seems to concentrate over a particular section of the island and for a few days the ground in this section and the air above it will be thick with terns, all in constant motion and constant vocal contact with one another. The noise produced is deafening, and reminiscent of an angry football crowd in a stadium. At some unknown signal, all the terns in a particular area will simultaneously lay their eggs, and then the tern cloud moves on to another part of the island leaving behind it a dense carpet of incubating birds. It is as though some giant invisible machine is systematically covering the island with a layer of sooty tern nests in the most efficient pattern possible.


A sooty tern.


Sooties on the wing.


This albatross chick is wondering why it suddenly got so noisy.

Sooty tern eggs are just as well camouflaged as grey-backed tern eggs, but instead of there being one or two eggs concealed on the ground where you want to walk there are thousands of eggs concealed on the ground where you want to walk. Walking through the colony ellicits a most indignant response from its occupants. The terns on the ground peck your feet, the ones in the air peck your head, and all of them scream obscenities at you until your ears bleed.The terns now cover almost every inch of the island and have recently surrounded the barracks, where they pay no heed to silly human conventions such as shutting up and going to sleep at night time. Slowly I can feel my sanity begin to seep away.


Walking through the terns can be tricky.


That brown lump next to the tern is its chick.


This tern took exception to being photographed.

Terrifying American bath products #1

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps.

There are a few bottles of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps scattered around the barracks. As you can see in the photo below the label is covered in teeny-tiny white writing. Here is a sample of what it says:



Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Who else but God gave man love that can spark mere dust to life! Poetry, uniting All-One! All brave! All life! Who else but God! "Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One!" Einstein, 1939, after Nazis and Commies united, proposed spacebombs that destroy all, unless we finally teach the moral ABC's the real Rabbi Hillel taught Jesus to unite in All-One-God-Faith. As teachastronomers Abraham-Israel-Moses-Buddha-Hillel-Jesus-Spinoza-Paine-Sagan & Mohammed, inspired every 75 years, 6000 years by the Messenger of God's Law. Halley's Comet: "WE'RE ALL ONE OR NONE!" "THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD!" "TEACH LOVE THY ENEMY!" "LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE!" Israel-Moses-Buddha-Jesus-Mohammed: ONE! ALL-ONE! 1st: If I'm not for me, who am I? Nobody! 2nd: Yet, if I'm only for me, what am I? Nothing! 3rd: If not now, when? Once more: Unless constructive- selfish I work hard perfecting first me, absolute nothing can help me! 4th: Only hard work- God's Law can save us, but if we teach only our clan? We're all hated then! So, we must teach friend and enemy, the whole Human race, the full-truth, hard-work, free speech, press & profitsharing Moral ABC's All-One-God-Faith, lighting-like, 6 billion strong, for we're All-One or none! All-One-God-Faith, as teach the African shepherd-astronomers Abraham & Israel, for 6000-years, since the year 1: "LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE!" WE'RE ONE! EXCEPTIONS ETERNALLY? NONE! ABSOLUTE NONE!

And so on. Terrifying, isn't it? I mean have you ever seen such poor use of grammer and punctuation on a commercial product?

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.