216 



BERGER 



TABLE 1 

 Checklist of the Birds of Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands 



'Confirmed breeding bird. 



fBelieved to breed; confirmation needed. 



ground cover. Many of the smaller islets remained basically 

 untouched during that period, but with the advent of the 

 testing program at Enewetak, major portions of the atoll 

 were swept instantly by destruction. 



The effects of the nuclear testing on bird populations 

 has not been well documented, but certainly in those 

 islands swept by blast and heat, the decimation of the bird 

 pHjpulations must have been Inevitable. Hines (1962) 

 reports, for example, that after the first thermonuclear 

 explosion at Enewetak (test Mike) In 1952, on Rigili 

 (Leroy), some 14 miles from the blast site, "many of the 

 terns there were sick, some grounded and reluctant to fly 

 and some with singed feathers, particularly the noddy terns 

 and the sooty terns, whose feathers are dark in color." At 

 Bogallua (Alice) only 3 miles from ground zero, which pre- 

 viously had been "laden by stands of coconut palms and 

 thickly populated by birds" (Hines, 1962), no animal life 

 could be found. One week after the Mike test "transient 

 birds" were observed on Engebi in a scene of utter desola- 

 tion. Possible genetic effects on the birds apparently were 



not studied. On Janet Island on July 23, 1971, Berger 

 found a white-tailed tropic bird chick with a deformed bill 

 in which the lower mandible protruded far to the right of 

 the normal upper mandible. This chick certainly died after 

 parental feeding stopped. In a large colony of sooty terns 

 on the same island, Berger found six immature terns with 

 such badly deformed left wings that the birds could not fly. 

 Nevertheless, environmental alteration has not been 

 totally negative with resp>ect to all bird populations on 

 Enewetak. The removal of vegetation from many of the 

 islands as a result of the cleanup program has op>ened up 

 new nesting areas for ground nesting birds, as documented 

 by Temme (1979). 



FEEDING HABITS 



No intensive studies of the feeding habits of the 

 scabirds of Enewetak Atoll have been published. Studies 

 have been made, however, on many of the species in 

 other parts of their range. For example, Ashmole and 



