Schreiber 
Christmas Island 
June; Spent the day on SWIMMING AND HACK islets 
doing the saw data as collected earlire there. 
See sheets fo info. 
I june* Dr. Pyle arrived on the CG plane and we had 
a good two hour tlak, wish it had lasted longer. 
Stopped to see the lorakeets and they put on 
quite a show for nsx. Also had good look at pair 
of warblers 
) June: worked on RTTB in the area of y site today 
and banded some 50 adults on eggs, in evening 
worked the colony on the northewat lagoon. 
0 June Last night had a flat tire so spent the raor: 
ing having it fixed and also spinning down blood, 
then in the afternoon the monsoons set in again 
but in between showers got a few RFB measured ana 
also spent abut two hours netting sooties form the 
r cl«L3r 
SOOTY TERN: Dudley and i talked about how many 
sooty tdrn eggs had been talkea out £e of the Ion 
on colony ad he and Eeniba think that the numbers 
are close to 250,000 and in figureing this out it 
is only about 1000 trips to the colony, with each 
trip taking one bucket of 250 eggs, and since t e 
men make more than one trip a day and often come 
back with large pails or washbuckets full the nun 
bers a probably well above this... I did a roug 
measurement of the colony and figured it ^e cseia 
some two and a half miles long uy approx 
yards wide, making 3,500,000 square feet of area 
covered and the nests are very thick, a consenati 
ve estimate of one egg per 3 square feet S^yesj 
I total of about 1,200,000 eggs # in the area but not 
that many have been laid but it gives some e 
of the number of birds present, probably some l 
' million present. Took returns by looking for band 
ed birds and netting them out of air. Spent two 
hours at this before it began to rain again an 
| caught twenty banded but probably saw some 10 more 
that did not catch. All the 853 bandes showed scm 
s?i5 R8fe t sfia,-ife e Sf, y . A11 birds examineo mo 
Schreiber 
Christmas2 Island 
* 
/ 
/ 
10 June, cqn’t 
Sooty returns: 
753-03764 
34950 
313-90501 
90859 
853-29117 
29710 
31034 
31048 
32192 
853-33875 
36564 
37243 
43268 
43991 
45379 
46972 
48668 
51087 
863-44642 
45629 
11 June: spet the day onthe FOYLEBANE, the ship here 
to collect the copra. Most interesting day, the 
captain Bill Watson really and great person. Never 
have i seen such a congenial group of fifficiers, 
they same to shore and we went loberstering and 
looking at birds. Most enjoyable... 
12 June: spent afternoon on Manulu lagoon islets. 
Morning got the 4 wheel drive stuck and so had to 
drive to london at 10 mph andhave it fixed. Evenii.. 
took ST returns. 
WRSP: one one of the islets found the remains of 
one of these petrels and it is pretty rotton and 
the bill and skull well eaten but the tail and bad 
and wing feathers in tact, made an alcoholic of it, 
SOOTY TERN: spent evening taking returns,and.• 
the molt is nothing like aixhx ashmole says it 
shkuod be for nesting birds on assenfiion.— 
see nwe sooty tern sheet for data: 
found egg completely white, no color at all. Also 
an egg with great red bloody swirls as if egg had 
tristed as it came through the oviduct. One bird 
( caught in doddler bush and being eaten by crabs. 
13 June Again worked islets inmanulu lagoon and then 
the sooties at night. 
14 June worked the remainder of the manulu islets 
today and theij looked for lorakeei_s, not find, and 
bled and sexed sooties at night. 
