Brought in the mist nets having caught no shorebirds. 
The entomologists found plenty of mosquitoes to collect. 
On the way back to the ship we saw a Phoenix Is. Petrel, a record for the island. 
27 November 
Arrived Palmyra early, circled the island to the leeward anchorage, and set off 
in the black rubber fubber raft for the final island. Just before we reached landing 
point we sighted the rest of the shore party and gear bobbing up and down in the 
heavy swell. lDoug and I were set ashore on the first island to the right of the 
lagoon - entrance and were to work our way banding and wading between islands to 
point X across from camp, where Fred would pick us up with raft. Paul and Dick 
were let off on the other side and were to work their way down to camp. 
The entire island was lushly vegetated especially with Scaevola and Messerschmidtia . 
We counted 6l Hawaiian Noddy nests in two adjoining Pisonia trees. Fairy terns were 
occasionally roosting. On the second islet there were more nesting boobies and less 
noddies. The shoal waters were thick with mullet and other school fish and with black-t 
tipped sharks, small. 
After half-an hour’s wading we reach the third shore. The main section of the SW 
part of the island. Here were the boobies. Most were nesting in Me s s ers ch m id t ia , 
some in Pisonia but we had to climb after almost all of them and it was slow going. 
I worked one side while Doug worked the other. As I was stretching out along a thin 
? about 15’ up to grab- a furious nestling from its home of piled sticks I heard a 
snap and down we went. I hit the water before I could nove a finger, fortunately 
landing atop the bird. Both of us survived. 
By 2 PM Doug and I were exhausted and began looking for each other. By the time 
we had succeeded we had stirred up so many birds that Fred and Dick located us and 
came over the the boat. Fred took off to check the few ponds nearby to look for ducks 
and was able to collect three European widgeons. 
We skinned and scraped these and prepared to go booby banding at the E end of 
the island. Took the raft at 1700 and chugged down to the causeway. We pulled the 
raft over it after unloading everything and drove the rest of the way to the highest 
Pisonia trees on the island. Here the Red-footed Boobies were very thick - on the 
first trip .J000 were banded in this spot. Fred, Doug, Dick and Bob took blood samples 
for several hours while Paul and I banded nestling until dark and then adults, knocking 
them out of trees with 8* bamboo poles and then cnatching them out of the water before 
either catcher or caught were drowned. Banded to 1000 and then chugged back by star- 
light and ? . 
28 Nov ember 
Set off in the morning with more Booby bands P this time intending to finish off two 
strings each on nestlings® Fred collected another duck for another record^ this time 
a female shoveler. We wandered all over the island ^ finally returning to where we 
had been banding the previous night. Then wading across a half mile of lagoon to get 
to an island we saw a gull. This caused a slight change of plans ^ i.e.^ Paul trudged 
about 2 mi. back to the raft which was parked on the causeway to get the shotgun. I 
was parked in the middle of the lagoon in the midday sun to watch the ? gull. 
Paul got back^bout an hour later and I pointed to the gull and he shot it. ,We 
walked to meet Fred and it was a Laughing Gull but we had the last laugh. Fred had 
lost his ? in deep water so I went to look for Doug and found him in half an hour 
and we two walked all the way around the old jeep trail rather than wade back through 
the lagoon. We got back after four and found Dick back from blood running on the ship. 
