Gene Kridler to Roger Clapp 
January 1970 
p.6 
Row for the Red-footed Boobies - I checked 123 nests and of these 
40 contained eggs, 20 were fresh nests but were empty, and 89 were birds 
on nests which I did not check. I just counted them as sitting on their 
nests but never was able to get in there and find out what they were doing. 
Row for the Frigatebirds - I counted 39° birds on nests and of 
these which I checked 48 were incubating eggs, 32 of the nests did not 
contain eggs, and 310 of the nests I was not able to check to see what 
was under the birds sitting on the nests, so I T m going to enter that 
right down in that report here too. You see, I gave some of my field 
notes to Dave and he consolidated them and was a little bit on the brief 
side. As far as I know nobody else checked any of the nests of the 
Red-foot or the Blue-faced Booby or the Frigatebird to see what they were 
doing, they just counted birds on nests. The reason for some of this 
checking and not checking is that here again, when we are making our 
Finch transects we divided the island between the members of the party 
and each one was not only responsible for making his Finch transect through 
this particular section of the island but was also responsible for check¬ 
ing or counting the seabird species and some apparently did not understand 
that they were to make a check of some of the eggs or perhaps forgot about 
it, so the only data that I have are the field notes and I recall that I 
think I was the only one who was making any attempt to get any idea of what 
percent of the negtsmight contain eggs, what percent of the nests had 
chicks, and so on. 
Here is another note I have about the frigate. I say that a female 
frigate had two eggs in one nest. I just don’t know how unusual this is but 
I think this is the first time that I have seen two eggs in one nest, now 
whether they were both fertile or not, I didn’t have time to check. 
