huts and pill boxes. There are still a few buildings being used, and a 
lot of electronic equipment. <- 
The albatross seem most numerous on the south and east portion s 
of the island, though we did not get a through look at all sections 
of the island. The birds are nesting all though the ruined buildings, 
and though we saw no nests inside buildings we did see live birds in them. 
There are also numerous traps left in the ruins in the form of air raid 
shelters which the birds fall into and then can’t get out. These holes 
have many skeletons in them; mostly albatross, but a few tropic-t£rd 
s ku lls were noted. We found a live but very emaciated bird in one 
shelter but it died shorlty after we rescued it. We covered over 
several of these holes so that no more birds would be trapped in them. 
There were large numbers of red-footed boobies nesting in the 
Scaevola bushes in the southeast section of the island, near the 
largest antenna. In numeorous places there are large mounds of Sand 
covered with Scaevola, and wherever boobies nested on these mounds ~&K; )i 
vas always on the lee side. On level ground the birds seemed to have 
■ • *. - 
no special position preference. There were eggs in at least 90 per cent 
(eggs bime with white chalky covering) of the nests checked that had 
a bird onthem, making it very difficult for us to take our sample 
from non-breeding individuals. Once a bird has an egg in the nest, 
. % 4 --- * 9 
or if it is about to lay, it is very reluctant to leave the nest. We 
collected several birds which would not leave an empty nest, and discovered 
i. 
in autopsy that they had eggs almost all the way down to the oviduct. 
We collected one insnature bird, and a couple of others were noted. 
The solitary birds fly more readily and are much harder to collect. 
There seems to be a sexual dimorphism in the soft parts of the bill 
at least now while they are breeding. The skin about the eye of the 
