When we entered the harbor birds came and rested on the mast heads. Many of them stayed there or came back to it on and off all day. The whole rigging was full of boobies and frigate birds. [[32]]
We saw three great rays too, at least fifteen feet across. Later on we caught a huge ray. They seem to fly under the water just below the surface. Every once in a while they flip themselves right out of the water and turn a complete somersault. Sometimes they do this three times in succession. One of the biggest ones we struck with our bow and neatly turned it over.
The Frigate Birds are Unbelievably Tame.
When we landed on the little beach we saw many of these frigate birds on their nests, boobies, gulls, and the cutest little doves. They seemed so tame. They were always fighting for each other’s twigs in their nests and as soon as a bird left her nest another bird came and stole a twig and flew away with it.
I lifted a frigate bird right off his nest, and then put him back and he never seemed to mind at all, just looked surprised. About the next time I picked up a frigate bird, I wasn’t quite so lucky. I wanted to lift him [[33]]up to have a picture taken and he didn’t seem to like posing much more than I did. Anyway, he pecked me and I suppose that’s why I look so cross in the picture. They have big strong bills and this one got hold right in the lower part of my left leg. All the time, I was barelegged and wore shorts, which is the way everybody aboard dressed.
The frigate birds and boobies weigh about two and a half pounds. The former have not webbed feet like the boobies and therefore they cannot catch fish as easily for they only swoop down and dip them out of the water; but the other dives right in and sometimes out of sight for several feet underneath and swims with his webbed feet. Frigate birds steal the other’s fish. Both birds have tremendously long wings and sail in the sky with a long, long spread.
The male frigate has a queer pouch on his throat. He is dark brownish in body, with a few greeny feathers on the top of his [[34]]neck and then this very strange balloon which is so distended he can rest his head upon it and go to sleep. He can puff it up or have it empty. The male sits on the nest in the mornings mostly while his mate goes out to sea fishing. She is dark brown with a white breast. Of course you can see these bright red pouches a long way off and they look like so many toy balloons in among the bushes. All these birds, the boobies and frigates, build rather foolish looking nests right on the bushes about two feet from the ground so of course one can go right up to them and see the eggs or young chicks.
The little doves and the mocking birds have their nests on the ground often under a jutting out rock. The doves have bright red feet, soft tan brown bodies and eyes as blue as forget-me-not flowers.
On Tower we saw amblyrhinchus, or the marine lizard. I really learned to pronounce that word, although I can’t spell it yet. A [[35]]lot of these scientific names are awfully long and hard. It is black, about a foot long or maybe fifteen inches, and swims in around the edges of the rocks. All the specimens brought to the ship had seaweed in their stomachs which they must have been way out to sea to get.