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ves, striking scarlet beaks,'and a single, slim red tail 
leather to match. 
But if the Tropic Bird is a full-blown lovely, her 
island neighbor, the Fairy Tern, is the delight of the 
fancier with more delicate tastes. This is the small, pure- 
white acrobat who poises above your head, curious and 
friendly, and flies forward and backward with a rustle of 
wings that sounds for all the world like crinolines at a 
prom. These little birds watch you from the depths of 
unusually large black eyes. 
The parade goes on—the mourning birds, the Wedge¬ 
tailed Shearwaters, who keep the island alive with their 
moaning at night but keep to their burrows by day; the 
Laysan Teal, one of the rarest ducks in the world—a 
gentle little fellow who has learned to walk in a dignified 
manner as though he knew he was the object of interest 
bv ornithologists the world over; and the Masked Booby,' 
a real prizewinner at any masquerade and a big man on 
the campus at Laysan. The lovely terns are ubiquitous. 
Their graceful Eight is always a wonderful thing to watch. 
And the tiny Laysan Finch, a little displaced person who 
made good in the middle of the Pacific, gives the island • 
visitor a feeling of closeness with the world he left behind. 
And so they and many other species live, filling the 
air with their incessant shrieking and activity-sounds 
that the men reported as not jarring at all, but perfectly 
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j tunist. It is with pride he sits in his life preserver nest. 
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| i in tune with the mood of the place. Humans do not act 
I ] out all the dramas in the world. On Laysan one sees the 
| I constant tragedy of death and struggle, the comedy of 
: family squabbles and real estate brawls, the grandeur of 
I and the promise of continuing life. 
Even a diehard bird fancier like my husband was 
j drawn to the representative of another form of life on the 
1 I hiand. The .small Hawaiian seals were the beach boys 
■| j"'ho kept the tourist pair amused. These chunky little' 
j downs with their scrubby mustaches and sad eyes were 
j ! just plain good company. In fact, A1 Labrecque, who 
J dept on the beach, frequently woke up to find one of ■ 
| dhem dozing just an arm's length away. 
For recreation (as though the whole affair wasnt 
; taxing enough) the Laysan visitors swam in the lagoon 
an d tried their hand at spear fishing. The clear turquoise 
w ater was the home of such beauty that snorkeling at 
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A This Hawaiian Monk Seal was unaware that his reputa¬ 
tion was being undermined by a bottle that drifted ashore. 
Hanauma Bay has lost its charm for my husband, who 
listens to my raptures over it with patronizing smugness. 
And just beyond the reef, adding zest to the whole pro¬ 
cedure and gleaming silver beneath the azure, were the 
tiger sharks restlessly in wait for the unwitting bird fledg¬ 
ling or the unwary Ash. . 
Laysan has an interesting history. Ornithologists 
shudder at the terrible inroads made on the bird life 
there, first by the feather hunters in the day of plumed 
millinery, and later by the well-meaning, but tragic, idea 
of a fortune seeker. This gentleman conceived the idea 
of starting a rabbit canning industry on the island and 
imported a few of the creatures to start the venture. 
Rabbits, being what they are, soon increased into a 
hungry horde which gobbled up the vegetation and ate 
itself out of existence. But before the ill-fated • experi¬ 
ment had run its course, three species of endemic birds, 
the Laysan Honeyeaters, Rails, and Miller birds, had 
become extinct, and many thousands of sea birds were 
buried alive by the drifting sands. However, the depre¬ 
dations of the feather poachers were stopped by law and 
vigilance, and the far greater damage of the . rabbit ex¬ 
periment has almost been erased by time. 
All good things end, and at the time appointed the 
sampan arrived off-shore. Two dark-brown, bearded 
naturalists, for whom shoes and shirts were not standard 
equipment, saluted the dish-towel flag they had flown 
over the camp to symbolize their freedom from domestic 
servitude. They loaded their camera equipment, glass 
ball trophies, and uneaten beans into the dinghy and 
paid a last tribute to the birds, to whom their leaving, 
as their coming, made little difference. 
just a few hundred miles away as. the tern flies over 
the incredibly blue sea' was Hawaii, the FuradisQ of 
countless travel posters, a complex world of beauty and 
business, romance, and routine. There was home and it 
was good to think cf getting back. So home it would be— 
square meals and wifely attentions, hot showers and 
smooth sheets—but always in a private corner of the mind 
the island of Laysan would remain, a place where a man 
can escape, a world of primitive perfection fraught with 
beauty, on the fringe of paradise. 
Note: A note of real tragedy muit be added to this tale. Skipper Shiroma 
was host to the bird watchers on hi* last round trip to the fishing grounds 
around Laysan Island. On the next voyage of the Koyo Man this gallant 
gentleman, a knowledgeable craftsman at an age-old trade and a maa who 
was never really at home away from his shop, wa* lost at sea. 
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