AIRMAIL 
November j f 1963 
Mr. Robert A. Sun&ell 
US Coast Guard LORAN Station 
APO 105 
San Francisco, California 
S 
Dear Bob: 
Hear that the moon's pretty bright down there these days (or was). 
It can really be a factor in night work. Bushman called yesterday and 
gave us some details. They somehow want frigates but it's not a simple 
matter tc get them in quantity there at Sand as you know. We could get 
some but it would mess up all breeding birds and we can't afford to do 
this. It's not possible to get to those on the outer guy wires and as 
far as I am concerned we should forget about getting to them. Phil 
keeps saying we can reach them with a pole and noose. All I’ve got to 
say is I would like to see him do it. And don't let Bushman do any¬ 
thing drastic like taking breeding birds. He says he is going back 
later this month. 
He also mentioned more Berlese funnels. The shop here has just 
finished (red-tape you know) making 2 sets (j funnels each) which I 
planned to bring out there later for quantitative work. I will go 
ahead and ship these on to Sand and you can put up one of them to try 
to obtain ticks. While you are doing this, collect the other ecto¬ 
parasites from the nests - (give species, date and any other pertinent 
data). I would especially like some collected from the shearwater 
burrows (with old chicks) and other nests for a seasonal species 
comparison. If you have collected any ectoparasites already, send 
them back to the SI so the sorter (Jay Gee Lyon, a new person hired 
for this purpose) can process them. 
Banko will soon get out some memos to the field personnel. He 
is sending a list of common names of birds (AOU sanctioned) we come 
across so everybody's reports will be the same and other people will 
know what we are talking about (i.e.. Blue-faced Booby- not Masked 
Booby and American Golden Plover). Also a standardized procedure for 
reporting bird population estimates and progress report directions. 
All of these should have been done long ago. 
I still don't know all the details from the Sudduth talks. The 
'64- plans are still being discussed. We do have use of an 80 foot 
