SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 20560 
DROPPINGS FROM THE EAGLE'S ROOST 
August 15, 1966 
I suppose that each week should start with notification of draft board 
notices - this week we have a guarantee that Rick Chandler will be in 2-A until 
June, 1967 - congratulations to you Rick. Incidently, will everyone please 
put some pressure on Rick to advise us of a bank where we can send his checks? 
They keep piling up here and he either doesn't know the S. I. address or is 
agin letter-writing. I've written to him a couple of times to no avail - if 
one and all says to him each time he sees him" "Have you written about your 
checks?" this might help! 
A note from John Fitch mentions that his bat research is progressing 
nicely - he should be heading for Honolulu before too long and one trusts that 
he has made reservations. 
Max and Bob have apparently finally learned how to operate the cannon net - 
they got 474 birds in one shot'. They have macerated their camouflage netting, 
though, so we airmailed some off to them - a net to hide a net'. A wire this 
morning gives us another first: 642 - 01l65banded Sand, Johnston, 6 - 69 , A, U, 
October 19, 1964, taken August l4, 1966 at St. George'.'.I This is a pretty good 
bird11 Max and Bob have banded 2676 to date and should go over their three 
thousand plus of last year with no difficulty. We shipped them 5,000 bilious 
green streamers Friday so be watching for them. Bob is wearing those magnifi¬ 
cent red flight coveralls for banding - hope that Max will take a colored 
pictured for the Project archives'. I almost forgot what is probably the most 
important part of the St. George various reports - they are getting Hong Kong 
bands (presumably put on in Japan) and also huge percentages of returns, about 
20 percent'. I've misplaced the wire which gave the numbers but out of somewhere 
around 1100 birds banded there was an addition 240 (approximately) which returned. 
do We haven't seen any paper work from the first half of SIC $l4 which we have 
td/anything about but we have preliminary reports in on Gardner, Howland, Baker 
and McKean. Roger reports that the departure of the Gilbertese from Gardner has 
not changed the vegetation to any great extent. The first BFBooby was sighted - 
that's not well put - I mean that the first POBSP sighting of a BF Booby was made. 
There was an unusually high population of shorebirds of all species present. 
We also got a first record of the Blue-tailed Skink from Gardner. 
Howland - a new plastic tape marking system was started for nests. If it 
stands up well in August, it might be worth using elsewhere. "Thirty-three 
nests were marked with strips of red or yellow plastic adhesive tape so that any 
change in nest status between the July and August...visits might be determined. 
Nests with an egg were marked with two strips of tape, nests with young were marked 
with one strip of tape, and the number of each nest was written on the nest marker. 
Another interesting result of the search for banded birds was with the Red-foots - 
they tried to capture only roosting birds (not on or near nests) and 13 of the 
15 captured were from other islands I Two more Munro-banded birds (Sooties) were 
retaken. Banding totals: 52,180 new banding and 2, 192 returns, 52 Berlese samples 
52 specimens. 
