Replacement

Happy Labor Day. I hope your weekend is as good as mine. Not that I did anything too special so far, but it's always a great weekend on Tern Island. We're expecting the NOAA ship Hi'ialakai to bring us some food and supplies tomorrow, so we won't get the holiday off, but it's worth it to get fresh food.

We said goodbye to Mark, Tiphanie, and Carlos this week, so now we'll have to check up on the seal pups ourselves. There are still a couple that are nursing, so they need some looking in on. Ty and Paula came in on the plane also. Ty will be filling in for me while I'm off island through Dec. I've still got a couple more blogs to go before I'm off though.

As I said, it's been the usual around here. Collecting turtle hatchlings, picking weeds, picking up nets and ropes that wash up, counting birds, and of course the most fun part, cleaning and maintenance.

Our boat was out of commission for a bit because the thermostat went bad. The parts came on the plane so I was able to get that going again. Just to make sure it's ready for unloading the ship tomorrow, we had to take it over to Serendipity today (see last weeks post if you don't know what that is). It seems like it will work tomorrow.

This weaned pup is having a tough weekend. At least his mother taught him some manners. He covers his mouth when he yawns.

I was grading the runway before the plane came in (dragging a big I-beam) and just felt like taking a snapshot.

Some of the nice coral at Serendipity.

These are oval butterflyfish. They are a bit small in this picture, but I didn't want to crop one out for a closer view.

This is a young teardrop butterflyfish. We don't see them too often, but they are around.

A spectacled parrotfish. These parrotfish start out as females when they are young and turn into males as they mature. This one looks like it's in the process of changing since it has the color patterns of both.

More yellow tangs and a few other fish.

This is one of the green sea turtle hatchlings I found last week while doing my entrapment walk around the island. It would have been roasted by the sun in a few more hours, so at least I gave it a chance by putting it in the water.

We don't like this bird around here. It is a cattle egret and it can be a predator of small chicks and eggs. We don't mind vagrant predators that get here on their own normally, but this is an introduced bird to Hawaii and would not be a vagrant here otherwise. One bird won't do too much damage, but we don't want two to show up and start breeding. This picture is out on the back deck near the clothesline in case you were wondering why it's so cluttered.

I'm wondering if this masked booby was singing the Rolling Stones to itself "I'm not waiting on a lady, I'm just waitin on a friend" (they normally hang out in groups on the runway). At least that's what popped into my head when I saw it.

I like this picture of a juvenile red-footed booby because each feather is really distinct. I didn't shrink this one as much as most of the others so you might be able to see that better if you double click on it.

This juvenile red-footed booby is flaring its tail for airbrakes so it can see what I'm up to.

A white tern caught a couple of fish, either to impress another adult or to feed its chick.