SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON 25. D. C. 
Sand Island 
Aiigust 7, 1963 
Dear Fred: 
Thanks for jnvr 2 inforinative letters. Under separate cover I’m 
sending the band recovery foni:s and banding schedules which we have 
finished. Vie only have about 50 ore mnused banding schedule sheets so 
send another supply. If the date section is v/rong, have the assistants 
change them, also let me knov; so I can correct the ones in the future. 
We didn’t draw lines on them here, if necessary we’ll do it later. 
The color m:arkers arrived yeste -day on 2 different planes. We of 
course also had a ’’good tim.e” cutting them for the Sooties. We cut 
what we thought was enough for yesterday and by noon had to cut some more 
(total 1300 Sooties yesterday). We are banding entirely by day now; one 
netting and one banding-two teams. The ^oon is just too bright to v 7 ork 
at night. My thumb is really sore from tightning those markers. We pre¬ 
insert the pointed ends in advance and then only have to slip the markers 
over the foot and tighten them down. We’ve picked up speed now. With Pat 
Elliott catching, I can do 100 in 35ininutes-with the birds cooperating, 
however. I sent the telegram about the markers on Sunday the 2Sth and you 
say it arrived at the SI on the 31st. That’s entirely too long, "^t must 
have gotten lost along the vray. Next time I’ll also sent them with a 
little more priority. 
Thanks for the info, on the frigates. I’ve seen only F. minor so far 
bmt I’ve noticed that 7B’s are al'ost too large for some of them. This h 
has put me to v;anderi:"'g. 
As to the Shear^Arater ship ent in Septemher: Vlien \;e got here I esti¬ 
mated 5C0, 2 weeks later I raised it to 1000 and now with 700 banded I 
say 1500+. They seem to be comring in as the Sooties are leaving. Also I 
have yet to see a hatchling. They are still on eggs and new burrows are 
still being dug. I’ll let you and Dr. Huinphrey decide. Also 
call hr. hiiller at Ft. Detrick, he’s seen themt. I have been watching some 
of the eggs ^ow for a month and still no ## chicks. The adults are switch¬ 
ing every 6-10 days. I would really like to have a balance so I could 
weigh them daily. At the moment, I don’t believe these birds eat anything 
while thev are settinf?. 
f.* 'w j 
Catching the birds from the guyi'/ires is o\it of the question. V/e 
would need a floating firetruck with an extension ladder to get at them. 
Honestly they sit up as high as 100 feet and only sit on the outer v/ires 
which exte^^d out into the water. Even riding out to their bases would be 
dangerous as the water aro'’* id here is littered v;ith pipe, rocks, junk, etc. 
With the full moon, I can now almost count them at night. I v/ould now 
re-estim.ate that there are close to 1000 frigates here, most of w^ich are 
S’*tting on the wires at nighti 
I’ll try to get some data on Shearwater burrow temperatures. We did 
take a few readings of Bonin burrows at Southeast I. The figures should 
