Goonies 2: "The Return"

So the goonies have landed! As of Oct. 17th the Albatross have returned to Midway. I have come to love these huge and stinky birds. For almost 2 months now I have been anticipating their return and it is crazy cool to finally see them alive and not just their rotting carcasses lying about.

The first to arrive were the blackfoots. One day while we were on beach clean up we saw HUGE footprints in the sand. Eric realized that they were albatross so we followed them up the beach through the naupaka over the volleyball court until we reached and ironwood forest. We all split up and searched through the forest into a field of bunch grass all while making albatross calls. We finally found what we were looking for...

Over the next couple days the blackfoots started to really show up and I quickly found myself crawling through the dirt and petrel holes to get closer to the birds

You can see how GIANT these birds really are, the blackfoots are a little bit bigger than the laysan

Just trying to add a splash of color to his wardrobe
The blackfoot dance

I couldn't resist a face like that

And neither could he

Well the 2 most important lessons I've learned on Midway are: 1. Always kiss an albatross with one eye open and 2. Never breath in while kissing one such bird because they taste EXACTLY like they smell! I felt like I was just getting to know the albatross when the laysan finally came in and stole all the attention away.

The fun thing about laysans are that they will dance and talk with you

The laysan have officially taken over the atoll now and are everywhere you can possibly imagine, but the bird that puts a cherry on top was the golden goony! There used to be about 5 million short tail albatross, but they were killed off for their gorgeous feathers and now there are only about 200,000. Most of them nest over in Japan, but Midway is lucky enough to be home for 3 golden goonies. I didn't think I was going to be able to see one just because we are leaving as the birds are arriving, but I can now cross the short tail albatross off my list of must see exotic and rare sea birds. Fish and Wildlife is really hoping for a nest this year because they had 2 juveniles actually dancing last year.


This is one of the juveniles, it is from 5-7 years old and eventually the whole head will turn golden. Even though it is a juvenile it is sexually mature so hopefully its mate will come soon
This was positively the biggest bird I have EVER seen. I thought the blackfoot was big, but you can see how it dwarfs the poor little blackfoot. I was pretty sad we saw 2 blackfoots start to dance right next to it so the short tail got all excited and wanted to start dancing too, but it only took .5 seconds for one of the blackfoots to turn and run away.

On eastern they have a short tail decoy plot and they have had one adult come back for a few years now. We had to trek some batteries over to the plot and while we were there we got to see the full adult in all her glory. It was crazy to see this bird the coloring and size make it look cartoonish and fake.