3 
Johnston. X>. v. 
1964 ~ ~ 
IB Apr ''f’-'e Inland 
sired flock of oty - arns flying over \.?s in the dart-. Jut out on 
the point , there were thousand^ — sorr-e flying and call ins:, others sitting 
or standing ell over the rood end field -like area. First we proceeded 
to seek oat nests of drown boobies . These ver on the 1'- goon side of the 
point, above high tide level, end roughly con-posed of old sticks. There was 
absolutely no protection against sun, rein, cats or rets. The nests were 
usually 25— SO* apart, but necaslona 11 y as close as 10’. Five nests held 
two eggs , 8 others h*d « single egg or single chick. i he egg was as 
lerge as a hen's egg end mn pale-tannlsh white with e king of light 
bluish undercoat. Hale boobies of this species hive pale bluish bills, 
females pale yellow— green. Some of the chicks were getting in brown 
primaries, secondaries and rectrices; others were pure, downy white. The 
adults gave a nonaraaicel " qwok . " At least 3 of the adults were molting 
their rectrices. 9 of the brooding- or incubating adults were males. We 
then literally waded into the booty T ern colony — g million birds? 
Between us, by grabbing and catch 'ng any available bird on the round, we 
bended 1000 adults in o*. 2 -A hrs. Many of these were incubating adults. 
Only one nest thst I saw contained 2 eggs. The others were 18-24" apart on 
the average, but occasionally 12" apart. Actually there is no nest, merely 
® crude shallow scraping awey of debris. Tech egg wes ten-white with a 
variety of chocolate brown spots especially at the large end. I .indged 
that some 70% of the birds I caught were nesting but ob. thought this 
figure was too high for the colony. In the dark it appeared as -though the 
incubating bird was accompanied by the mate a few inches away. Usually the 
