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.

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