41 
- 11-19-63 
Up early again today, and in the AM finished the scaveola 
rip-out vegetation plot® The scaveola clump itself seems to be 
a single large interconnected series of plants. In the stable 
parts of this community there are clumps of trunks spacsd 
regularly over the floor of the clump with interconnect 
tions between. While the growth does not seem to proceed 
by runners in colonization of new open spaces, the presence of 
interconnected groups of trunks in the stable !l climax areas 
of scaveola certainly suggests that the stable clump replaces^- 
the colonizing clump. Perhaps this is accomplished by fusion og 
ajacent 
roots 
•om different 
clumps. 
In the PM I walked the whole beach affixing metal K - tags 
to the bamboo stakes, carrying the shotgun, and staking out 
new albatross study nests. I noted several sanderlings, nine 
Tattlers, one Yellowlegs ( ?), many turnstones and plovers, and 
or.e curlew in this juncket. Staked oux. 12 new Black— xoob nests, 
and noted about 30 - 35 Black-foot eggs - No Laysan eggs. The 
incubating Black—foots are so attentive as to allow mo to 
touch them while sitting on the egg, and one bird got a five 
minute chin-scratching treatment - besides her own monograimed 
nest stake. 
In the evening we caught rats for the ticks that Deseret 
■wanted. In all from 63 rats we recovered 248 ticks. The rats 
were weighed and frozen for Bill ! s study. In looking today I f 
found no ticks in the vegetation areas* neither on the beach 2 
under the driftwood. 
11-20-63 
Today started poorly: Up at 3 AM to find the thumb reswol¬ 
len and exceedingly painful once again, and did not get the 
needed sleep. Spent the AM soaking it, catching up on the field 
notes, and tailing with Sundell down at Sand: Apparently 
Bushmann is there, so I relayed on the information that wo 
had obtained 3^3 live ticks from over ICO dead rats along with 
the suggestions that such cannot be continued on a monthly basis 
and that bird populations should not be shipped from Kure. I 
hope that these suggestions can be impressed on the powers thaj, 
be. In the afternoon after soaking the thumb for an hour 
I set the last of the K stakes and marked out the remain¬ 
ing Black-foot nests r In the evening I wrote letters and - 
saw the flick - the thumb is still very swollen. __ _ 
I.-' 
i 
X 
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