It’sa Ouch

So, the other day, I was biking around the island taking video to show to my family when I get home so they can get a good idea of what the island looks like. Sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Apparently not. Just so you all know, Boobies are the dumbest creatures on Earth. D-U-M-B. When they get scared, they don’t fly away, they fly towards. So, there I was, biking, minding my own business, when a Red Footed Booby, who was just fine and safe in his bush, decided to fly right out in front of my bike. I slammed on the brakes and had to swerve to avoid the dumb bird. I went down, kind of hard. For your enjoyment, I have included some screen shots from my video to illustrate the dumb.

Here is the bird, perfectly located not to be disturbed by me and my path.

Here is the bird flying in front of my bike. Check out the horizon…I am still falling.

Now I am down.

Here is a shot from my perspective on the ground of what just happened. Totally blew out my flip flop. I was able to fix it…but still.

Here is some blood for you. Please do not be distracted by the blood like I was. My middle toe is broken.

The Doctor I have been emailing says I have to be on crutches. Which was nice in the beginning because I could not walk on my foot. I am supposed to get an x-ray in Hawaii. Thanks a lot you dumbest bird of all the dumb birds.

Halloween!

Halloween was a really a weekend event. Decorations had been finalized by then. We had orange streamers, ghosts made of garbage bags, cats and bats cut out of cereal and granola bar boxes, painted black, Horace the spider made of a garbage bag with sticks for legs, and the paper lantern had a face of a jack-o-lantern taped on.

The celebration started on Friday with Steve’s birthday. The pancakes in the morning were for Steve’s birthday, but the pumpkin shapes were for Halloween. Katrina and I used the fridge magnets to write Halloween themed words on the fridge.

At the pool party we had, Steve noticed that the gator hours hit 66.6! WHAT?!?! It really did. What are the odds of that? Dinner, the two Cranium matches, and the movie were all enjoyed in our costumes. Saturday was used to better perfect our costumes and Sunday was our photo shoot.

We started at Corner Beach were Katrina beautifully transformed into a mermaid. She had gills and fins and everything! She used paint to paint some gills on. Katrina cut out shells from a cereal box and painted them. She used her green skirt as her legs, her snorkeling fins as a tail, and she put tinsel from the Christmas stuff in her hair. She looked really good!

Then it was off to South Shore. I assembled my costume and turned into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Green Sea Turtle. I found a short brown Rubbermaid tote in bulky storage and Katrina painted green plates on it. I used paracord to string up a belt and suspenders to tie them to. The Rubbermaid handles already had holes in them, so that was easy. I used watercolor paints to paint my cheeks, legs, and arms green. I borrowed Colin’s Teenage Ninja Turtles tee shirt, put on my green banana, and I was good to go. Just swing the nunchucks around and I was the real deal.

Then it was Colin’s turn for photos. Colin was a beautiful hula girl. He wanted to make a coconut bra. He started finding coconuts and hacked away at them. They weren’t the right size. He must have opened twenty of those things. The murder site is very gruesome. He was able to find one half of a coconut that was the right size near the garden. And I had one by my tent I had been using to start seedlings. Next came the drilling. He drilled holes and then strung string through them to create the bra. He borrowed my sarong and I helped him with his butterfly tramp stamp temporary tattoo. He put on a lei and made a headdress out of plants, sewing on each flower. His photo shoot consisted of him doing hula things, playing with his belly button, eating his beard, and being the sluttiest girl I have ever seen. Mission accomplished, you sexy thing!

Then off to find some of Steve’s “people.” Steve became a Red-Footed Booby. He used his white sun shirt as his body, a Reese’s box rolled up and painted blue for a beak, Cheese-It boxes rubber banded to his feet, and had paper with strips cut out, taped to his arms for wings. It took Colin and me to tape those things down. It was pretty windy. He found some Booby birds to hang out with. This one below had a pretty long bowing session with Steve. He was so great looking that he even fooled the birds. Steve really wanted to feed a chick a dead fish. I think there should be limits to costumes.

At camp, we all got together to take a group costume photo. We all had a blast during our Halloween events!

Booby MIC

One of the surveys we do on the island is the Booby Mean Incubation Count (MIC).  The purpose of the survey is to monitor and identify population size changes in three species of Boobies.  We survey the Red-Footed Boobies, Brown Boobies, and the Masked Boobies.  Only Red-Footed and Brown Boobies have been seen nesting on Johnston Island.  Both of these species have only recently started nesting on the island.  It wasn’t until 2006 after the military base closure. They are growing rapidly in response to the new non-military environment here.

We do this survey every 46 days for the Red-Footed Boobies and 43 days for the Brown and Masked Boobies.  That is based on the incubation period for their chicks.  If we do them in 43-46 day intervals then we have a greater chance of not counting the same bird twice.  We only count active nests.  That means that there has to be an egg or a chick in the nest to be counted and we only count the babies, not the adults.

The island is broken up into 22 sectors.  We do a sector at a time and we walk in formation so that we don’t miss or recount birds.  There were mostly Red-Footed Boobies, which makes it easier for us.  They nest in trees so they are easy to spot.  We use a chart with growth stages listed that are determined by feather growth.  For example, an all naked bird is a 1.  They would have just hatched.  A chick with all downy feathers and half the size of an adult is a 4.  And a fully feathered chick is a 9.  We walk and check each nest.

Sometimes an adult is sitting on a nest and we can’t see inside.  We use a tipping stick to tip the bird up a little to see if they are sitting on anything.  We slide a stick just underneath the breast of the bird and pivot her on her heels to take a look.  In this picture, Colin is tipping a Red-Footed Booby and found a stage 1 chick underneath her.

Other times we can’t see in the nest because it is too high.  I am not 20 feet tall so I can’t tip the bird.  We count those as “unconfirmed” nests.  We counted hundreds of Red-Footed Booby nests and 3 Brown Booby nests in 2 days.  I hope to see a Masked Booby nesting on Johnston Island before I leave in December.