New Manager

OK, it's supposed to be official as of today that I am the new manager of Tern Island. I was only "acting" manager up until now. I had to be here a year before I was eligible for the increase in grade. It won't change anything, but I'll at least get a raise.

We've been busy, as usual, out here. This time we've been clearing out the warehouse so the construction work can start in a week or so. It's really difficult to find other places to store all that, since that's why we have the warehouse in the first place. They should be done with it by late Nov, so I'll just have to keep things cluttered until then.

I've still had time to continue with my jogging. I decided 5k wasn't enough excercise though, so I bumped it up to 10k. Now that's enough excercise, at least for the time being. That's 5 laps around the runway. The scenery is great, so it doesn't get old. And some of the meaner birds like to try to peck my head at certain spots on the loop. It keeps me paying attention at least.

We'll be starting our flights this weekend. Many of the sooty terns have gone and I hope even more leave by the weekend so none of them get hit. The Kahana will be coming up on Labor day to bring the rest of the construction gear and 3 new volunteers. Ty will also be coming out from Honolulu to act as manager while I get my time off the island in Oct/Nov. So there's only one more week of 5 people, then by next week, we'll be back up to about 13 people. It makes cooking night a little harder, but other than that, it should be alright.

I took a little time this week to go out with Whitney and band some Bulwer's petrel chicks. We have these nest boxes for them since it hard for them to dig burrows with all the coral chunks everywhere. They use them quite a bit. Here, there are 3 chicks out of 4 nest boxes.

There was another nice sunset this evening.

This red-footed booby was just watching me work on the tractor.

This is one of my favorite little fish. It's a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse. They have little cleaning stations where bigger fish come to get cleaned. This picture is a little blurry, but I've been trying to get a picture of one forever, so this is as good as it gets.