17 
4 - 8-23 
slightest depression on top of the limbs of trees and bushes. The Hawaiian 
Terns build at least a semblance of a nest of seaweed etc. arid crow.a into 
close-packed nesting colonies. Two Laysan Albatrosses still held sway on the 
front porch while a ridiculous brown fuzzy youngster sat back on hid and 
snapped his beak in childish threat as the crew worked too close to him. 
Red-footed Boobies, with a sprinkling of Hawaiian Terns, crowd every available 
nesting site in three bushes south of the buildings and make ludicrous threats 
with ruffled feathers, shrieks and bill thrusts at passers by. Luckily they 
stick to their nests until almost touched, for the finches (T. cantans) make 
short work of any egg. 
The incubation was slight to nil in the broken Booby eggs I saw. The 
wind^l and doors are all gone, and the sand has drifted 3 feet deep in the 
main buildings where the Schlemmer family used to live. But the house is 
■^r from empty. Wedge-tailed Shearwaters sit in pairs in every corner. 
Two pairs of Red-tailed Tropicbirds sit side by side on a drift of sand - 
i 
taking the shade of the building J s interior in lieu of bushes. A pair of 
finches are nesting behind the broken pane of an old window and stray 
/ 
individuals are hopping along the sills and rafters looking for any tern 
eggs that might by chance have escaped them during the flurry among the 
Terns when the first boat landed. I fear they got them all in the main 
house which Wetmore is to use as laboratory. Luckily one Hawaiian and one. 
Love Tern have hatched and the fuzzy youngsters are safe from the marauding 
Finches. Outside birds are scattered everwhere, but not packed in colonies 
except in the case of the Red-footed Boobies and Hawaiian Terns. It is 
apparently only the overflow from the roof colony that are nesting in the 
bushes, cocoanuf trees, lumber piles and main house. The Finches hop about 
v 
r — -» , y~ 
or, i n ot—, r> or o 
ch new. bit of duffle or grub that is lugged up 
