Then their "whee” grows to an excited crescendo climax that satisfies the 
listener the birds heart is in it. Most of the Laysan dances I have seen 
are stodgy affairs of curtsying & bill snapping. The Black-feet are better 
V 
all around, throwing out both wings instead of tucking the head under one 
l 
and putting tnore pep into it. 
% 
The harshest note of the island is the terrible screeching cackle of 
the Tropic Bird. 
The Sulas I imagine are purely diurnal, as the immature birds I spoke 
of before always come home at sun down to perch in the cocoanut trees and 
peer down stupidly at the light of our flash lights. Diomeaia seems 
stupid at night and generally both parents will be found lying near their 
youngster with the head under the feathers of the back. The Man-o 1 -war birds 
seem also to come home to roost at night, the foot-high stumps of dead tobacco 
plants on the vest side of the lagoon being black with them at dawn. 
Found a Bristle-thighed Curlew dead today in the tobacco patch where 
we spent the day - mostly waiting for sun. Too far gone to save, so 
skeletonized- it-. Hardened drops of egg yolk from her last breakfast clinging 
to her neck feathers. 
1 * 
As I walked along the edge of the Sooty-backed Tern colony a dead Gray- 
back caught my eye. , As I picked it up it gave a few gasps but it was so 
completely all in that I put it out of its final agony. Skinned it myself 
instead to trusting it to Schlemmer, whom I'm trying to teach to skin, and 
found it had died in ovipositicn, an egg being lodged at the orifice of the 
oviduct. Doubtless she had been' in labor all day if net longer. Stomach 
entirely empty and general appearance of viscera suggested that she might 
*-*v*.. 
tirely 
emotv an 
ve gon 
e without 
T v QT 
have sour* 
of pl v 
•a -y 
they are 
food for two or three days. There are a dozen pairs or 
: xhe shelter of the great Sooty-back colony. Unfort- 
mutely they are on the outskirts so still subject to the attacks of the 
