' w ‘* t ** ^^ -i-icid cached unere lasc nignc nad weathered the deluge in their 
tent nude of my bed cover & a tarpaulin. It is some island. Last night 
- hesitated to carry the cameras in because of the dust and grit that was 
bloving - this morning the sand is packed hard and all the lowlands flooded. 
?. cuneatus seemed to entirely disappear from the island during the blow 
save for a few scattered groups huddled above ground in sheltered nooks. 
However, they appeared from nowhere & within half an hour after the sun 
burst through they were busy excavating the burrows which have been completely 
1 -Hed ana all trace of them lost for nearly a week. In digging they use 
^ne siio. as a picx to some extent^at least when they are starting a burrow 
& are . . above ground where they can be easily observed. In the loose 
, sand of the higr. ground the pick work is not as important as the shovel 
\ • 
excavation. The latter they do by lying first on one side for a time & 
V 
uhen on the other and driving the dirt out behind him in rapid jets that 
fly 2 or 3' feet in the air .■when they are working rapidly. 
The peer Soocy-sacked* Terns were flooded out from their big colony and 
nave abandoned it to the laso tern for a new station where the thousands 
upon thousands of birds have again gathered in.a compact colony. The new 
sire is soill in, or on, rather, the carpet of Sesuvium, but on a xrifle higher 
ground to the south. 
marsn is a t laso a name that fits the place we have been working - 
or orying to - since before the storm began. The water table was only a 
_ecw or se eelew the surface even when we came, being held there annarentl'' 
-jj a., underlying s^ruua oi coral or phosphate. Until last night only tiny 
homes a foot or yard across were all that gave access to the fresh (?) 
a «V 1 a Vi. 
-w* V> --... 
u brackish as it was, was all the birds had. Today, 
however, the drainage from the deluge has set the whole country afloat. 
