the ship traveling to the next 
island ). Actual banding takes 
five to six hours; related work 
takes up the remainder of the time. 
Each bander normally bands from 
1000 to 1500 birds during this 
short period. Most of the banding 
is done at night with the bander 
wearing a small headlight which 
temporarily blinds the birds, mak- 
ing them easy to catch. Before 
he starts, band numbers are recorded 
and a thin coat of paint is sprayed 
on the bands to distinguish recent- 
ly-banded birds from older ones 
(this is done in addition to the 
spray paint put on the bird later). 
One hundred bands come partially 
opened on long plastic tubes. The 
bander holds the end of the tube in 
his teeth, first making a cut part 
way through the plastic tube 
so that the bands may be slipped 
off without taking the tube out of 
his mouth. Wearing his headlight, 
with pliers, a notebook, and his 
supply of bands, he is ready to 
begin. 
Picking up the bird with his 
left hand in such a fashion that 
its wings are secured, its bill 
held away from him, and its right 
leg stationary, the bander removes 
a band from the tube with his right 
hand and puts it on the bird's leg. 
Then, keeping it in place with the 
fingers of his left hand, he secure- 
ly closes the band with the pliers.. 
Last he releases the bird, reach- 
ing for another bird with his left 
hand and another band with his 
right. In this manner he can band 
up to 500 birds an hour under i- 
deal conditions--approximately one 
bird every seven seconds. After 
several hours of such work, he will 
have blisters on his hands from 
using the pliers, his old cuts will 
have been opened by the birds' 
pecking and scratching, he will be 
covered with a light coat of re- 
gurgitated fish (and other by-prod- 
ucts), and he will wonder why he 
ever decided to work with birds. 
For any banding program to be 
successful the birds must be re- 
captured either at the original 
place of banding or at some dis- 
tant point. Since the recovery 
rate for some species is low, much 
of the success of the Pacific band- 
ing program depends on the many 
observers in the Pacific Basin who 
report banded birds. We consider 
ourselves fortunate if one Sooty 
Tern out of one thousand banded is 
recaptured away from its banding 
site. Even with larger birds such 
as the Lesser Frigatebird it is 
unusual to have recoveries of more 
than one out of a hundred. We 
have banded over 700,000 birds in 
the Pacific during the past thirty 
months. With this large number we 
hope to be able to document migra- 
tion routes which are now unknown. 
EXTRACT EROM THE JOURNAL 
OF A BIOLOGIST IN THE PACIFIC 
PROGRAM GIVING AN ACCOUNT 
OF TWO DAYS' WORK ON A 
PACIFIC ISLAND. 
June 5 
I awoke at reveille and had a 
light breakfast while the ship toss- 
ed and pitched on a slightly choppy 
sea. We spent most of the morning 
packing and organizing gear for our 
landing on the island. After the 
ship anchored and our rubber raft 
was launched, we lowered our gear 
down on ropes until the raft was 
nearly, full. At about 10:30 we 
climbed down into the raft, which 
was not as easy as one might think 
since the raft bounced and tossed 
