Sunday, January 11, 2009

More Rain

It's kind of been a weird week, weather wise. It's been either really nice or really bad. Not much in between. Yesterday, I spent the entire morning mopping up water that leaked through the roof and windows. We've had a few beautiful sunny days too. At least we weren't shoveling snow like some of you are doing.

There are a lot of chicks hatching right now. One red-tailed tropicbird has a chick, one white tern has a chick, and there are a lot of black noddy chicks hatching today. The black-footed albatross are about a week away from hatching and the Laysan albatrosses, about 2 or 3 weeks yet.
The nights have been beautiful for the most part too. The moon has been so bright, it's almost like daylight. I've got a couple pictures for you.
Here's the white tern parent hovering by its chick.

This black noddy chick is still hatching. It's back half is still in the shell. I couldn't get a good picture of that though.

This is the view from the roof a few nights ago just before midnight. I took a 30 second exposure, so it wasn't really this bright. The bright "star" in the sky is Venus.

This is looking north from the island. This picture looks really nice at full resolution, but that's too big to upload. If your screen has decent resolution, you can see the stars. This was another 30 second exposure. There was a turtle swimming around at the bottom of the picture, but since it's dark and moving, you can't tell at all.

6 comments:

Seagull Steve said...

Thanks for the camera advice Pete....I convinced someone to loan me a decent SLR with a 300mm lens for the trip. Between that and my point and shoot, I think I should be set!

Great pictures, as always.

Shammickite said...

Do most of these seabirds only produce one chick per season?

Pete Leary said...

The birds that lay only one egg per season are albatrosses, boobies, and frigatebirds. Tropicbirds and white terns will lay another egg if their egg or young chick doesn't make it. I'm not sure about the noddies, petrels, and sooty terns. They only lay one egg at a time though. All of these seabirds will only be able to feed one chick per season.
The Laysan ducks loved it at Midway so much that they would have multiple clutches of ducklings in one season (unheard of at Laysan).

Jana said...

Wow-I love the night pics-I would love to be there! Where do I sign up? Take care.

Pete Leary said...

You go to Volunteer.gov and click on Hawaii to sign up. And it is nice here.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures... I lived on Midway Is. in 1972. My husband was stationed on Midway. Brings back memories of life in the Pacific. Thanks for your pictures and interesting information and comments. Mary