Biology Projects

Today, again, was a good mixture of biology tasks. We started the day banding Red-footed Booby chicks and a Red-tailed Tropicbird chick from my reproductive success plots. We then banded Masked Booby chicks until lunch time. Masked Boobies are goose sized fish eaters that are powerful birds. We chase them down with a modified fish landing net and then carefully extract them from under the net while it is still pressed to the ground. I'm not a hunter but this is a thrilling hunt without any prey getting hurt. After lunch we did a mean incubation count of all the Great Frigatebird nests on the island. There are no eggs left. The nests all contain chicks and only 2 of those nests had chicks that were small enough to still be brooded by their parents. The last MIC for Great Frigatebirds was a month ago and there were many eggs at that time. The seasons are changing here on Tern.