Clapp , Roger 
jj^t**#**^— r* Irr— r irn. fi« i nn~i5i^).<i»i i, « 
19 
Last night I banded 505 Mashed Boobies (largely from an enormous 
club of 800 or more). And was able to walk erect through them causing 
only faint disturbance. A very pleasant contrast to Enderbury. 
A total of about twenty-four interisland recoveries were obtained. 
None of these birds were neck-ringed. I think that this tends to imply 
that these birds were not on their islands of banding origin when we 
came through for our recoery rate was high enough on some of these islands. 
So it seems likely that at least one out of twenty-five would ha ve been 
marked. These birds were possibly "visiting" the island on which they 
were banded when banded. This is highly hypothetical. None of these 
interisland birds had any trace of "subadult" plumage but the k-6 
whose voices we recorded all have female voices. 
Also spent some time examining the seavreck for Mollusoan fauna. 
On the West Beach at least this fauna is extremely impoverished. A 
few mor ula , a few "Hermit-crab" turbans and three species of small 
cowries were obtained (one Cypraea ca put -serp ent i s ) . Two species of 
Conidae were seen in the sea-wrack. One (a small purplish species; the 
other was Con us ebr aeus . This latter, which on the Phoenix Islands, 
was one of the commonest forms in the sea -wrack is quite scarce here. 
I later examined the rook-bordered pools (there are several blowholes ) 
at about noon but the number of living shells were very scant (only 
two or three seen all encrusted, one a very worn morula). The few 
other shells seen were inhabited by the hermit crab with blue and black 
barred legs but shells are at such a prem i:um that one individual was 
seen to inhabit a much battered and broken shell. 
