It's been a while since I posted, I know, but that's what happens when there's banding to do - we get home, hot and tired, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and compose a long description of everything I was just doing. But! Now it's the weekend. Recall, banding weeks in MAPS protocol are ten days long - six days of banding, and four days off, because if it rains one day we need a long buffer period to be able to push into so we can stay on schedule. Anyway, we used one of our off days earlier in the week because Dan wasn't feeling well, but that still leaves us with a three-day weekend of Tuesday through Thursday.
So yesterday (Tuesday), we did some exploring. First, lunch at Saigon Kitchen, a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with $5 lunch specials - can't beat that, really. $5 got me a delicious bun topped with barbecued beef and spring rolls, a spicy bean sprout salad, a cup of egg drop soup, and watermelon for dessert (if only I wasn't allergic - it seems to be a popular dessert item at restaurants here). Then we went on to Lake Susupe, which is remarkably well-hidden for a decently-sized lake on a small island. Only one road goes out to it, and that road gives no indication of ending up at a lake, so the few times we'd tried to get to it without seeking a map for directions, we'd ended up driving circles around it without ever actually seeing it. There is a small bamboo and wood pier at one end, which, oddly, starts in someone's yard - and they've posted a sign with a disclaimer stating that any injuries are not the responsibility of the landowner. Injuries? What?
Well, it turns out, the pier is in some serious disrepair, with major sections rotting away and entire areas blocked off with yellow caution tape where the decay had resulted in completely impassable holes. It was all easy enough to avoid, but suddenly the warning made a lot of sense. Once we'd had enough of the view from the pier, we started off on a little trail that circles the lake. There were turtles of some sort, although they were too far away to get a good look at them and they dove into the water before we could get close. Also found here were Yellow Bitterns and Mariana Moorhens, an endangered subspecies of the Common Moorhen (it is estimated that only 30-40 exist on Saipan, and we saw five).
From there it was on to Tank Beach on the east side of the island, which despite its name, has no tanks. Maybe it did once. It does still have several pillboxes, however, built under cliff overhangs with limestone blocks so as to look like part of the cliff itself from a distance. The east side has much rougher surf than the west, which is probably why the beach is lined with limestone cliffs and overhangs rather than gently sloping up as it does on the other side of the island. It makes for some very dramatic scenery, certainly. We wandered around here and explored the few shallow tidepools, where we found tons and tons of sea cucumbers, anemones, some tiny bright blue fish, and an endless supply of hermit crabs.
It was starting to get late at that point, so we headed back to the house for a bit, then went back out to go find the beach where the tanks actually are - Kilili Beach, also known as Invasion Beach, for obvious reasons. Two US tanks remain stranded there, making for an impressive sight at sunset. After that it was market time, which is always fun. For $6 I got a loaf of bread for sandwiches, two barbecued chicken legs (thigh and drumstick on each) for adding meat to dinners, a huge and beautiful bunch of kangkong (local leaf vegetable which is apparently similar to spinach, I have yet to try it), and a cup of sweet potato and coconut soup for dinner. Add to that the vegetables I still have from last week and the things I have in the cupboard, and I'm basically set for groceries for a while, though I know we'll go to the Thursday market and probably the Taste of the Marianas festival on Saturday, which will mean $5 meals at each of those. Also, I bought a dozen eggs from a local farm the other day, and that was $3.25, a dollar more than buying eggs imported from the mainland but I thought it was worth it. So, a week of groceries and dinners out a couple times for under $20. How insane is that? Initially it seemed like food was so expensive here, and it can be still if you buy occasional dairy products (I do like having milk available, even if it's $5 for a half-gallon) or other imported goods, but if you stick to local produce, harvest the free fruit that's all over, and eat far more vegetables and a lot less meat, it's extremely cheap to live here.
Rather than repeat myself several times over, I'm going to point you all to my flickr set for even more information, as everything from that praying mantis (row 3, column 4) and onward was uploaded over the last day or two, and most of the images, particularly those of the birds, have extensive captions. If there's something you think I didn't cover well or have questions about anyway, go ahead and ask in the comments and I'll reply in my next post.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Seabirds and Statuary
Saturday was our first day off. Normally we'd get four in a row, but the next period starts on Tuesday, giving us three days - the previous two interns started theirs a day late so we'd be able to band with them an extra day. Anyway, we spent a good deal of the morning just hanging out, and then went in the afternoon to visit Marilyn and Randy, who are archaeologists who also volunteer their time to monitor the Wedge-Tailed Shearwater population on Managaha Island, and run a small seabird rehabilitation center within their apartment. The purpose of our visit was to see their White-Tailed Tropicbird, a very cool tern-like seabird with a very long tail. This one in particular had fractured a bone in its left wing. They had had it for about a week, and already the wing had improved a great deal. It's very likely that he'll be releasable sometime this week. It was so cool to see one up close - as you can tell by the lighting, his feathers were extremely glossy, especially on his head, which was something I wouldn't have expected having only seen them from a distance.
Also unexpected was that they had more than just the tropicbird, something they'd neglected to mention to us. Also loose in their apartment and on their porch (although most are unable to fly) were six White Terns, a Marianas Fruit Dove (who was very shy and nervous so I didn't get his picture), a Sooty Tern (also quite nervous), and a Great Crested Tern who they'd named Kree for the noise he makes.
Kree was found as a juvenile when he landed on a Japanese fishing boat off Saipan, weak and desperate for food. Somehow he had been separated from his colony, and terns are very social birds and learn to fish from parents and other colony members before ever leaving for migration. So Marilyn and Randy retrieved him and nursed him back to health, and released him, only for the same thing to happen again. It seems he'd never really learned to fish, and had come to expect handouts from humans to be his main food source, so they retrieved him once more. He selected the computer monitor as his perch, and hangs out there for the most part, except for when he feels like going for a walk on the apartment floor, darting around and attacking people's ankles, or anything else that looks interesting (apparently he especially loves to chase down tomatoes rolled past him and then destroy them). Marilyn and I discussed some things they might try in order to get him seeking out fish on his own, rather than continuing to hand-feed him and expecting him to figure it out somehow from that - but I suspect he may be too habituated to humans to be released successfully, at this point. What he needs is a place to hang out where he can't see people, and has to search for his smelt in a pool of water or something rather than having them handed to him. The other thing they could do would be to train him to keep close to them, and then take him out snorkeling - a sort of seabird falconry, I suppose, just to get him hunting, but I think that would take a lot more time than they have to give for just one bird. Which is really a shame, because he's very cool, and has quite a personality, and it's obvious they care about him a lot.
Afterward, we hiked down to the edge of the cliff near their apartment building to where a colony of Black Noddies nest in an old ironwood tree. We hadn't exactly been prepared for a hike, having all expected to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it was worth crawling through the tangantangan (a non-native tree that is the source of castor oil which took over most of the island after it was razed in the war) in our flip-flops and shorts to find the nests. We couldn't really count the number of birds as most of them were wheeling around in the air above the trees, but there were at least thirty nests that we could see, and there were probably more farther down the cliff.
So rather than only spending an hour or so at the beach, we stayed at the apartment for a while longer, and hung out up on the roof where we could see out to Forbidden Island and also a White Tern "nest" (recall, they just lay an egg on a branch and call it good enough), then once the sun was starting to set we headed out so we could go get some food. On the way out, though, we came across something very strange: the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary sculpture garden. I know the photo is blurry, but like I said, the light was getting low and that was the best I could do. That photo only shows about a third of the whole area, though - the stations of the cross and then a few saints and angels. There was another area with several more saints, and then a long row of different versions of Mary, and an elaborately painted oratory. Another section of the garden had a gigantic Ten Commandments replica, a bunch more angels, and this dove fountain. It was so strange to see all of these elaborate and meticulously cared-for sculptures surrounded by the overgrown shacks and feral dogs that typify the south end of the island, but really, that in itself was typical. So many of the buildings on Saipan are run down and abandoned, but the churches (and the one Buddhist temple) are all brightly colored and well-maintained.
Yesterday (Sunday) Caroline and Nathan left, so now Daniel and I have the banding to ourselves. We start back up on Tuesday morning, so I suspect there will be plenty of pictures for you to see then.
Also unexpected was that they had more than just the tropicbird, something they'd neglected to mention to us. Also loose in their apartment and on their porch (although most are unable to fly) were six White Terns, a Marianas Fruit Dove (who was very shy and nervous so I didn't get his picture), a Sooty Tern (also quite nervous), and a Great Crested Tern who they'd named Kree for the noise he makes.
Kree was found as a juvenile when he landed on a Japanese fishing boat off Saipan, weak and desperate for food. Somehow he had been separated from his colony, and terns are very social birds and learn to fish from parents and other colony members before ever leaving for migration. So Marilyn and Randy retrieved him and nursed him back to health, and released him, only for the same thing to happen again. It seems he'd never really learned to fish, and had come to expect handouts from humans to be his main food source, so they retrieved him once more. He selected the computer monitor as his perch, and hangs out there for the most part, except for when he feels like going for a walk on the apartment floor, darting around and attacking people's ankles, or anything else that looks interesting (apparently he especially loves to chase down tomatoes rolled past him and then destroy them). Marilyn and I discussed some things they might try in order to get him seeking out fish on his own, rather than continuing to hand-feed him and expecting him to figure it out somehow from that - but I suspect he may be too habituated to humans to be released successfully, at this point. What he needs is a place to hang out where he can't see people, and has to search for his smelt in a pool of water or something rather than having them handed to him. The other thing they could do would be to train him to keep close to them, and then take him out snorkeling - a sort of seabird falconry, I suppose, just to get him hunting, but I think that would take a lot more time than they have to give for just one bird. Which is really a shame, because he's very cool, and has quite a personality, and it's obvious they care about him a lot.
Afterward, we hiked down to the edge of the cliff near their apartment building to where a colony of Black Noddies nest in an old ironwood tree. We hadn't exactly been prepared for a hike, having all expected to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it was worth crawling through the tangantangan (a non-native tree that is the source of castor oil which took over most of the island after it was razed in the war) in our flip-flops and shorts to find the nests. We couldn't really count the number of birds as most of them were wheeling around in the air above the trees, but there were at least thirty nests that we could see, and there were probably more farther down the cliff.
So rather than only spending an hour or so at the beach, we stayed at the apartment for a while longer, and hung out up on the roof where we could see out to Forbidden Island and also a White Tern "nest" (recall, they just lay an egg on a branch and call it good enough), then once the sun was starting to set we headed out so we could go get some food. On the way out, though, we came across something very strange: the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary sculpture garden. I know the photo is blurry, but like I said, the light was getting low and that was the best I could do. That photo only shows about a third of the whole area, though - the stations of the cross and then a few saints and angels. There was another area with several more saints, and then a long row of different versions of Mary, and an elaborately painted oratory. Another section of the garden had a gigantic Ten Commandments replica, a bunch more angels, and this dove fountain. It was so strange to see all of these elaborate and meticulously cared-for sculptures surrounded by the overgrown shacks and feral dogs that typify the south end of the island, but really, that in itself was typical. So many of the buildings on Saipan are run down and abandoned, but the churches (and the one Buddhist temple) are all brightly colored and well-maintained.
Yesterday (Sunday) Caroline and Nathan left, so now Daniel and I have the banding to ourselves. We start back up on Tuesday morning, so I suspect there will be plenty of pictures for you to see then.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Some catching up
It's been a crazy couple of days, or I would have updated sooner. We started banding on Wednesday, and so between that and getting to know the area and the sites we missed out on banding at, and a million other little things to do, we've been pretty busy. But I'll attempt to recap.
Tuesday night we did indeed go to the Tuesday Night Market, which is one of the three weekly local farmer's markets. The other two are on Thursday night and Saturday morning. For a dollar, you can get pretty much anything - huge bunches of long beans, eggplants, kangkong (a local leaf vegetable similar to spinach), bok choy, and so many other fruits and vegetables. There is a shrimp seller, who has aquaria of live shrimp to buy, a Chamorro-run meat stand, which has the best barbecued chicken I've ever had as well as an array of soups and breads and tamales and things I don't even remember the name of, and Fong's, the Filipino equivalent of a dim sum stand with both savory and dessert items. It's a fun destination for Tuesday night dinner as well as an inexpensive way to get a lot of locally-grown produce.
Wednesday morning we split up, with Caroline and Daniel banding at one site and myself and Nathan at another, a high altitude savanna with a few stands of Japanese ironwood pines. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my camera's memory card (it was in my laptop here still) so I don't have pictures, but I'll remedy that this coming week.
Thursday we banded at Bird Island, a site on the north end of the island. Our banding station is on Saipan proper, and not on the island itself, which is off-limits and hosts a colony of nesting Brown Noddies. The north side of Saipan seems to contain the most noticeable remnants of the war, aside from the tanks in Tank Bay farther south. Suicide and Bonzai cliffs have their terrible stories, and are pockmarked with bullet holes due to having been used for target practice. There is a long row of Japanese concrete bunkers along the road, now mostly overgrown with vegetation. And of course, unexploded ordinance can be found readily in the woods - there are three we have to step around while doing net runs, and they're likely completely safe by now as the tropics does a good job of destroying anything left in it for long, but we're careful anyway. We caught quite the variety of birds here, including a Collared Dove, and a pair of Collared Kingfishers, which have filled in for raptors here in the CNMI. Rather than catch fish, they sit on high perches or on powerlines and then stoop down to catch lizards, shrews, and small birds. In that way, they're more similar to kookaburras than the Belted Kingfishers back home.
For lunch, we went to the buffet at Spicy Thai, which is the best Thai restaurant on the island, apparently. It certainly lives up to its name. While it's not the same as Pacific Breeze back in Tigard, it's quite delicious, and is now only the second place I've ever seen the broth and vegetable soup that accompanies the chicken at Khao Man Gai. Spicy Thai is down on the south end of the island, which is where the garment factories used to be. The area used to be filled with people; now, only a couple years after companies such as the Gap and Calvin Klein, among many others, were removed from the island, it's something of a ghost town, with only a few buildings still inhabited. A fascinating interview on PRI's The World can be found here, discussing the effects of the sweatshops and their sudden disappearance - well worth a read or listen.
After the restaurant, we went back out into the field to look at another banding site so that Daniel and I will know where to go next week. After running a few additional errands, we were all very thirsty and ready for some coconut water by the time we got back to the house. As it turns out, young green coconuts are full of coconut water, which eventually becomes the nut meat. In its watery stage, however, the liquid is fat-free and contains an electrolytic balance so similar to human blood that in undeveloped countries it has actually been used intravenously (and quite successfully!) as an alternative to medical saline. It's also sweet and very delicious, unlike later on, and all we have to do is grab one from a nearby tree and hack into it with a machete until the coconut is just barely open enough to jam a straw into it. I can already tell, it's something I'll miss a lot when I head back to the mainland.
Yesterday we banded at another site, where among many other birds, we caught this Rufous Fantail. These very pretty little birds are the most commonly captured species at every site, and so I'm sure I'll get some better pictures later. Afterward we came back and got ready for Caroline and Nathan's going-away party, which was a potluck for all of us and their friends at Fish and Wildlife and the couple who run a project on Managaha on wedge-tailed shearwaters. It turned out to be a massive feast, with green papaya salad, calamansi lemonade, puto (little steamed rice flour cakes) and seared mahi mahi and poke mahi mahi provided by us, and with the guests bringing pizza, baked vegetables, Suriname cherries, quinoa salad, brownies, and tuba - a coconut water alcohol that is suprisingly delicious. We stayed up late (for us - about 11 pm) and a good time was had by all.
Tuesday night we did indeed go to the Tuesday Night Market, which is one of the three weekly local farmer's markets. The other two are on Thursday night and Saturday morning. For a dollar, you can get pretty much anything - huge bunches of long beans, eggplants, kangkong (a local leaf vegetable similar to spinach), bok choy, and so many other fruits and vegetables. There is a shrimp seller, who has aquaria of live shrimp to buy, a Chamorro-run meat stand, which has the best barbecued chicken I've ever had as well as an array of soups and breads and tamales and things I don't even remember the name of, and Fong's, the Filipino equivalent of a dim sum stand with both savory and dessert items. It's a fun destination for Tuesday night dinner as well as an inexpensive way to get a lot of locally-grown produce.
Wednesday morning we split up, with Caroline and Daniel banding at one site and myself and Nathan at another, a high altitude savanna with a few stands of Japanese ironwood pines. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my camera's memory card (it was in my laptop here still) so I don't have pictures, but I'll remedy that this coming week.
Thursday we banded at Bird Island, a site on the north end of the island. Our banding station is on Saipan proper, and not on the island itself, which is off-limits and hosts a colony of nesting Brown Noddies. The north side of Saipan seems to contain the most noticeable remnants of the war, aside from the tanks in Tank Bay farther south. Suicide and Bonzai cliffs have their terrible stories, and are pockmarked with bullet holes due to having been used for target practice. There is a long row of Japanese concrete bunkers along the road, now mostly overgrown with vegetation. And of course, unexploded ordinance can be found readily in the woods - there are three we have to step around while doing net runs, and they're likely completely safe by now as the tropics does a good job of destroying anything left in it for long, but we're careful anyway. We caught quite the variety of birds here, including a Collared Dove, and a pair of Collared Kingfishers, which have filled in for raptors here in the CNMI. Rather than catch fish, they sit on high perches or on powerlines and then stoop down to catch lizards, shrews, and small birds. In that way, they're more similar to kookaburras than the Belted Kingfishers back home.
For lunch, we went to the buffet at Spicy Thai, which is the best Thai restaurant on the island, apparently. It certainly lives up to its name. While it's not the same as Pacific Breeze back in Tigard, it's quite delicious, and is now only the second place I've ever seen the broth and vegetable soup that accompanies the chicken at Khao Man Gai. Spicy Thai is down on the south end of the island, which is where the garment factories used to be. The area used to be filled with people; now, only a couple years after companies such as the Gap and Calvin Klein, among many others, were removed from the island, it's something of a ghost town, with only a few buildings still inhabited. A fascinating interview on PRI's The World can be found here, discussing the effects of the sweatshops and their sudden disappearance - well worth a read or listen.
After the restaurant, we went back out into the field to look at another banding site so that Daniel and I will know where to go next week. After running a few additional errands, we were all very thirsty and ready for some coconut water by the time we got back to the house. As it turns out, young green coconuts are full of coconut water, which eventually becomes the nut meat. In its watery stage, however, the liquid is fat-free and contains an electrolytic balance so similar to human blood that in undeveloped countries it has actually been used intravenously (and quite successfully!) as an alternative to medical saline. It's also sweet and very delicious, unlike later on, and all we have to do is grab one from a nearby tree and hack into it with a machete until the coconut is just barely open enough to jam a straw into it. I can already tell, it's something I'll miss a lot when I head back to the mainland.
Yesterday we banded at another site, where among many other birds, we caught this Rufous Fantail. These very pretty little birds are the most commonly captured species at every site, and so I'm sure I'll get some better pictures later. Afterward we came back and got ready for Caroline and Nathan's going-away party, which was a potluck for all of us and their friends at Fish and Wildlife and the couple who run a project on Managaha on wedge-tailed shearwaters. It turned out to be a massive feast, with green papaya salad, calamansi lemonade, puto (little steamed rice flour cakes) and seared mahi mahi and poke mahi mahi provided by us, and with the guests bringing pizza, baked vegetables, Suriname cherries, quinoa salad, brownies, and tuba - a coconut water alcohol that is suprisingly delicious. We stayed up late (for us - about 11 pm) and a good time was had by all.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Morning tour
Now that the sun's up, I can actually see the island! We would have had a decent tour of it last night if that whole daylight thing wasn't a problem. But I just got back from a quick shopping trip to get some groceries, which enabled us to see what's what a little better.
Interesting fact: locals navigate by landmarks, not street names. This is partially because everyone has their own name for the streets, and it may not have anything to do with the road signs, which have been replaced a few times over the past couple decades when they were ripped out by typhoons. Driving customs themselves are a little different, as the roads are old and paved with coral - up until recently they didn't have access to asphalt. This means that when it rains, which it often does, the roads get very, very slippery. So people generally drive pretty slow, they don't stop for yellow lights as a sudden stop is a very bad thing, and they also don't stop when making a right turn at a red light if there's no traffic in the way.
Grocery shopping was done at the nearest Joeten, a supermarket which is like a cross between an American grocery store and Uwajimaya, but about a third of the size of either. Everyday things like bread and cereal and peanut butter are pretty expensive, compared to on the mainland, because it's all imported. This does mean, however, that organic and specialty food items like Kashi and Bob's Red Mill grains are pretty much the same price as Western Family products. The produce section of the store is nearly nonexistent beyond frozen vegetables and bananas, but that's because everyone buys produce at the local markets that take place Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I'm definitely looking forward to market-shopping either tonight or Thursday so I can get some excellent local produce to supplement my rather poor-looking broccoli, green onions, and bell pepper.
Interesting fact: locals navigate by landmarks, not street names. This is partially because everyone has their own name for the streets, and it may not have anything to do with the road signs, which have been replaced a few times over the past couple decades when they were ripped out by typhoons. Driving customs themselves are a little different, as the roads are old and paved with coral - up until recently they didn't have access to asphalt. This means that when it rains, which it often does, the roads get very, very slippery. So people generally drive pretty slow, they don't stop for yellow lights as a sudden stop is a very bad thing, and they also don't stop when making a right turn at a red light if there's no traffic in the way.
Grocery shopping was done at the nearest Joeten, a supermarket which is like a cross between an American grocery store and Uwajimaya, but about a third of the size of either. Everyday things like bread and cereal and peanut butter are pretty expensive, compared to on the mainland, because it's all imported. This does mean, however, that organic and specialty food items like Kashi and Bob's Red Mill grains are pretty much the same price as Western Family products. The produce section of the store is nearly nonexistent beyond frozen vegetables and bananas, but that's because everyone buys produce at the local markets that take place Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I'm definitely looking forward to market-shopping either tonight or Thursday so I can get some excellent local produce to supplement my rather poor-looking broccoli, green onions, and bell pepper.
Good morning from Saipan!
It is currently 7:45 AM on Tuesday. We got in last night after a freaking two-hour delay in Honolulu because some sort of engine temperature indicator light had gone wrong, and it took that long for them to fix it and fill out all the requisite paperwork and test it. As a result we had to run to our gate in Guam, but luckily they let all of us with connecting flights skip immigration so we didn't delay anyone too badly. We caught our little island-hopper turboprop to Saipan just fine, and managed not to pass out on the ride to the house despite both of us having been awake for 24 hours at that point, aside from a couple of crappy airplane naps.
BUT. Now I am here and I have slept and it's humid and 80 degrees and lovely. Currently we share the house with Caroline and Nathan, the previous MAPS banding crew who fly out on the 9th, and Emily, a plant crew intern from University of Washington. The plant people apparently go in and out a lot and I'm not sure how many there ever are, but the banding crew is just me and Daniel, much like last year when it was generally just me and Aaron.
So we get today off because we needed a chance to recuperate a little before heading right into banding, but this afternoon we get to go tour around a little and go get our local driver's licenses apparently. So that'll be a cool souvenir.
View from the back porch, looking east. The ocean is there, believe me, but it got washed out in the camera because it's the same color as the sky.
Baby breadfruits. :D
Our house is sort of right in the middle of the island, near Capitol Hill. To the west is the mountains, to the east is the ocean, which we can see from the dining area windows (and I from my temporary bedroom, a curtained-off section of the main room until the current banders take off). I haven't seen too many birds yet, but the most conspicuous ones are white terns, formerly known as fairy terns (the name fairy tern is also used for another related species, as it turns out, which is kind of confusing). White terns are best known for the fact that rather than build a nest, they lay their eggs on a bare branch and just... balance them there. It's kind of amazing.
The yard is full of coconuts, papayas, mangoes, cooking bananas, and breadfruit, and the current crew have also been able to find apple bananas and "boonie peppers" (a variety of the Thai birds-eye chili). The yard also contains a local citrus, the name of which I can't recall, but it's basically a lime/lemon sort of fruit that is excellent on papaya.
Anyway, I'm off for now. But as we have regular internet access here, expect much more from me in the future. I'll be posting all of my pictures to my flickr account, but I suspect most of the noteworthy ones I'll be putting here anyway, so don't worry if you don't want to follow my flickr or forget how to get there or something.
BUT. Now I am here and I have slept and it's humid and 80 degrees and lovely. Currently we share the house with Caroline and Nathan, the previous MAPS banding crew who fly out on the 9th, and Emily, a plant crew intern from University of Washington. The plant people apparently go in and out a lot and I'm not sure how many there ever are, but the banding crew is just me and Daniel, much like last year when it was generally just me and Aaron.
So we get today off because we needed a chance to recuperate a little before heading right into banding, but this afternoon we get to go tour around a little and go get our local driver's licenses apparently. So that'll be a cool souvenir.
View from the back porch, looking east. The ocean is there, believe me, but it got washed out in the camera because it's the same color as the sky.
Baby breadfruits. :D
Our house is sort of right in the middle of the island, near Capitol Hill. To the west is the mountains, to the east is the ocean, which we can see from the dining area windows (and I from my temporary bedroom, a curtained-off section of the main room until the current banders take off). I haven't seen too many birds yet, but the most conspicuous ones are white terns, formerly known as fairy terns (the name fairy tern is also used for another related species, as it turns out, which is kind of confusing). White terns are best known for the fact that rather than build a nest, they lay their eggs on a bare branch and just... balance them there. It's kind of amazing.
The yard is full of coconuts, papayas, mangoes, cooking bananas, and breadfruit, and the current crew have also been able to find apple bananas and "boonie peppers" (a variety of the Thai birds-eye chili). The yard also contains a local citrus, the name of which I can't recall, but it's basically a lime/lemon sort of fruit that is excellent on papaya.
Anyway, I'm off for now. But as we have regular internet access here, expect much more from me in the future. I'll be posting all of my pictures to my flickr account, but I suspect most of the noteworthy ones I'll be putting here anyway, so don't worry if you don't want to follow my flickr or forget how to get there or something.
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