Royalty Has Arrived

Things are starting to get exciting around here, as if the giant frigatebird chicks weren’t enough, we had our first of what will soon be thousands of the most majestic seabirds land on Tern this afternoon. Gusty rain ridden squalls have been periodically rolling in from the southeast throughout the day, and since it’s our day off, we’ve been reclining around the barracks reading, writing, and eating pasta. After a photography walk around the runway a decided to test out the gym equipment before dinner. As I was leaving the warehouse/gym after 30 minutes of crunches and pushups I was greeted with a graceful silhouette all too familiar from watching birds on Monterey Bay. A Black-footed Albatross glided over the runway; nose into the wind as if it were a Boeing 747 coming in for a landing. Immediately I shouted to the barracks not far from me “BFAL! BFAL!”, the code for Black-footed Albatross. After several passes it eventually landed on the north side of the warehouse amongst juvenile Brown Boobies and Brown Noddies. This was the first time I’d ever seen an albatross on land, the first time Larry and Olivia had ever seen an albatross outside of pictures and museum preps, and as expected it looked pretty awkward out of its element. It walked like an old hunched over man with arms clasped behind back, head bobbing with disapproval from side to side.  According to the records this particular bird with a yellow field readable band C392 was banded here on Tern Island as a chick in 1994, about the same time I was taking my first science class in my fourth year of elementary school. Cool. Our first BFAL will come and go for the next few weeks until more birds show up in November. If this season is a success, there will likely be around 2,500 BFAL and 1,500 Laysan Albatross breeding pairs by Christmas. Let the season begin.