24th June

the chicks are finally here! The first chick was spotted on the 22nd of June…a full week later than last year. So far, we’ve only banded 4 chicks… bad weather has prevented us from going in and banding more. The chicks are so tiny and adorable…even alex (intern) is making cutsie baby noises while holding the chicks. I enjoyed working with the Caspian terns on the west coast…but damn…I missed the common terns! Our favorite nest is in plot 2 nest #1. we’ve affectionately named the parents the “Tern-ninators” after watching arnold’s schwarzeneggar’s T3 terminator movie. The parents don’t stop dive-bombing and pecking our heads the entire time we’re near them. Now, the tern-ninators simply bitch us out from a few feet away and as of a couple of days ago…they’re now sitting on my head and shoulders yelling at me while I’m weighing their babies. I’m determined to get a picture of one of the tern-ninators on my head.

My second and last day off for the season will be this week. I don’t mind at all really…I miss a few things I don’t have out here like hot showers and internet access…but I’ll survive. Hopefully this last day off the island will be a fantastic time. One of my professors spends her summers in maine and come to find out…she’s about 20 miles away. She’s invited me to come and spend my time off with her and other guests…and that’s what I plan on doing. I had told her on the last day of the class where I’ll be for the summer (I had known that she was originally from maine) and that’s how we got hooked up out here. She’d like to visit me out here on the island, so we’ll see what we can do to arrange it.

Things with the new girl are still sketchy…there’s always something everyday. There are lots of little stories I can talk about …everyone agrees she “different” but I won’t go into it. I did have to yell at her one time though because she went into the colony when she was told not to. She kept saying she thought she should do this and check that…let’s just say we’ve had more than one episode of her doing what she wants to do. Since the “chat” she hasn’t done anything like that again. There have been a few problems with her work performance, but nothing major…it’s mostly been personality problems. What do you say to a person that wants to analyze the deeper meaning of the movie “what about bob?” if any of you have seen the movie…you’ll understand better by what I mean with her being “different.”

Well…in less than a month…I’ll be off the island and away from the birds again. We’ll see what I end up doing next summer. I’m hoping to get into a banding station over in Vancouver. It’s a volunteer basis…so, I can’t afford to stay too long, but it would be great passerine banding experience. My plans change all the time, but what I’m thinking of doing is spending part of the summer over in Taiwan and a few weeks in late july/early august at the banding station (if I get accepted). Hopefully, I can arrange it to get some private lessons and make a little bit of money in taiwan while I’m there. Keep in touch and keep checking the blog for photos. I had trouble with the computer last time and I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to do…like downloading photos. Until next time.