286 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. Ill, October, 1949 
broke our sleep and assaulted our ears from all 
sides, even above the pounding of the sea. The 
ticks roamed everywhere on the island. . . . 
When we arose from our beds in the morning, 
we found them on the floor filled with our 
blood from their night feeding. They particu- 
larly attacked our feet, causing them to swell 
greatly. They also appeared to attack the bird’s 
feet to suck blood. The birds also have a kind 
of feather louse and a few other external para- 
sites, one of which is a small beetle which has 
a very offensive smell and also attacks man. 
. . . The albatrosses fly in large flocks 10 or 
12 miles from the island, but are more numerous 
within 5 to 8 miles. They are most plentiful on 
the sea on fine, calm days. Few are seen during 
rough weather . . . 
When suddenly alarmed, a bird which has 
come back from the sea vomits an evil smelling 
substance, which on examination proved to be 
a kind of shrimp. None of them was complete 
enough, however, for myself or even the fisher- 
men to determine the species. The next food 
in abundance was a squid ( Ommastrephes sloani 
pad ficus), most familiar to us in Honshu. At 
times half digested miscellaneous fish meat and 
bones were found, and occasionally quite a 
large fish is vomited. The fact that all these 
foods are plentiful in the vicinity probably 
makes the island particularly attractive to the 
albatrosses. 
They begin to appear on the island in Sep- 
tember and by the latter part of October they 
cover the whole island. From where they come, 
where they copulate, or which is the male and 
which the female are hard to tell. The black 
colored young birds do not come back after 
they have left the island, but the smaller in- 
dividuals with the black spotted plumage which 
appear the following autumn may be one-year- 
old birds. 
In September and October they build con- 
cave nests of earth, about two feet in diameter. 
The site selected is an open place, with low, soft 
grasses, the reed fields being avoided. Each 
bird lays only a single egg, about G l /l inches 
long and 234 inches thick. The shell is white 
and thin, very fragile and very smelly. The 
contents are less albuminous than a hen’s egg, 
and not as good eating. The incubation is done 
very faithfully, the birds not taking any food 
during it. At the approach of men, they only 
clack their bills with anger but never leave the 
nest. We could not make them quit their nests 
even by lighting a fire in the nearby grasses and 
they remained even though their plumage took 
fire. 
The hatching period begins in January. When 
born the chicks are covered with pale black 
down, thinner on the head, and with black feet 
and bills. The parents now become very busy, 
carrying food in their crops from the nearby 
waters. They feed the young, bill to bill, with a 
yellow, bad smelling liquid. During this vomit- 
ing operation the parent appears to be in great 
agony, but the structure of their bills is well 
adapted for this method of feeding. Whether 
this liquid is a nourishing substance produced 
in the bird’s crop, or nothing but rotten fish 
juice is not clear. The young birds vomit this 
yellow substance when frightened. 
The death rate of the chicks is high, the main 
causes being starvation after losing their par- 
ents, death from parasitic insects, and, worst of 
all, the attacks of crows, which are very abundant 
on the island. Two or three crows will attack 
a chick, picking at its hip until they kill it, and 
then devour it. Almost one-third of the chicks 
perish from these causes. Not only the chicks 
but also well-fledged young birds and even adults 
often die, being unable to fly out of bushy places 
where they alight. We found the carcasses and 
bones of many such birds scattered over the 
island. 
By early June young birds are grown almost 
to adult size. The head is the last to acquire 
true feathers. They are fed by the adults until 
the parents leave the island in the middle or end 
of June. Then the young birds begin to leave 
the island, taking advantage of favorable winds, 
most often during the night when the sea is 
calm. Early mornings during this period the 
black young birds cover nearly the whole sea sur- 
face near the island. They remain and feed 
freely near the shore for the first week or so. But 
after the first windy night with rough seas, you 
will not find a single bird remaining the next 
morning. Thus the whole island is entirely 
cleaned out of albatrosses by mid- July. 
The so-called "doyonami” [mid-summer big 
waves], which visit the Pacific coast of Honshu 
at this season, are often accompanied by many 
young black albatrosses, which are frequently 
mistaken for the other species, the "Kurobu.” 
This latter bird is smaller than the foregoing. 
It is more gentle by nature and never mixes 
with the "Shirabu” colony but nests and rears 
its young near the shore. Its breeding season is 
later than the "Shirabu”. . . . 
