4 
Johns t on . D. W. 
1964 
13 Apr -s Wake Island 
birds didn't fly too readily in the d&rk, but I doubt that we banded any- 
wherr near l/lOO of the birds in the colony, -eppily, there were 9 bonded 
birds in the trench— all banded last year ag adults in June or July on this 
isl ? nd. his would suggest th.fet s om e of tne terns are on nearly a 10 month 
cycle. Although one might literally be surrounded by terns all over the 
around, as soon as you started picking them up to be bended, in spite of 
the deafen in* roars, somehow or other the nearby birds on the ground would 
gradually leave until, after banding 2—!* birds, there might then be none 
in r each • I Just under if they didn't utter b particular alarm note when 
bei^- caught, thus tending to frighten many of the others away. Certainly 
the easiest to catch were the incubating adults, then their presumed nearby 
m-tes. Pm simple dumbfounded by the fact that all Incubating adults that 
we've hand led had 2 incubation patches, and yet only very rerely do the 
bj.ro.$ here lay more than one egg . It 3s not unthinkable that under some 
conditi on s— perhaps Pte nesting, a poor season, etc, — they could and 
do lay 2 eggs more frequently. As on a previous visit we saw • feral house 
cat ' t the edge of th^ colony, ?o-nd a rile of several tern wings. This 
Is likely the only serious predatdr of the terns, since there is an active 
rat control rroeram on Wake. Noted interesting symbiotic relationship 
between Brown Booby nests and hermit crabs, he crabs, large end reddish, 
gathered, in numbers from 1-5 at the edge of the nest© end consumed all or 
P fe ~rts of th*' fish th t the boobies disgorged, Evidently the boobies will 
disgorge fish even when not being frightened by men because on at least 1 
occasion we found a 1 ft. fish i consumed, by the crabs. 
Id Apr Flipper Point . Praia Is , , T # kc # 
-^1830, ft erne fusee, t a . ad ?, fol, to 2 mm, oviduct somevh'-t enlarged. 
