It was just after sunrise and this red-footed booby was full of yawns.

These little seabirds called white terns, or more appropriately, fairy terns are so curious, that often you'll get the feeling you're being watched, and you'll glance up only to find one, two or three of these guys fluttering a few feet above your head. They are magic.

What Tern Island and the French Frigate shoals looks like from some hundreds of feet in the air. Seabirds are attracted to these sand spits by the droves, and the islands are also havens for the endangered Hawaiian monk seal and the green sea turtle.

Well, here I am flying into the French Frigate Shoals. Note that the pilots are wearing helmets and life vests. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore...

Home sweet home! This is where I'll do all my snoring and dreaming for the next two months. Not bad for an ocean view, eh..?

Chicks! As soon as I arrived, chicks started popping out of the eggs like downy popcorn, and parents were quick to start providing meals. Parents feed their chicks meals of food converted to a liquid, oily substance with almost as much energy per ounce as deisel fuel. Thus, the chicks are growing noticeably by the day, by the hour, really. This black-footed albatross feeds mostly on fish and fish eggs while Laysan albatross, the other breeding albatross species on Tern, feed primarily on squid.

Cat in the Bag

Handling albatrosses is quite a handful, or more like two handfuls and two legfuls. This black-footed albatross is still mostly inside the pillowcase that we use to weigh him. If you look closely at the yellow band on its leg, you might be able to see an archival tag. These tags measure location once a day and wet/dry states, from which can determine foraging events.