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.