Scott Shaffer from Palmyra Atoll. Palmyra Atoll is unique in many ways but its bird diversity and abundance are remarkable. I originally traveled to Palmyra to study boobies but one can't help notice the sooty terns. They are more numerous than the boobies on the island but are less than a quarter of the body size. Still, they can make a lot of noise. The shrills and calls of the terns can be absolutely deafening when visiting the colony. While at Palmyra (May 2007), the terns were incubating eggs

but a few small chicks had already hatched. I would guess that there were easily more than 10,000 birds nesting in the colony that I visited. Even at night, the colony was loud and the activity continuous. They say that the sooty terns do not land on the water to sleep when at sea. Seems hard to believe for such a small energetic bird.

Although our research was focused on boobies, we decided to capture and collect a small blood sample from 100 or so terns. These data will be analyzed to quantify/qualify the stable isotope levels in the blood - particularly, Carbon-13 and Nitrogen-15. These isotopes have distinct signatures in the blood that reveal clues about the diet and oceanic regions where terns captured prey. We were collecting similar samples from the boobies so it made sense to collect the same samples from the terns to determine how different or similar the diet of each species could be. This information will hopefully tell us something about the complexity of food web of the seabird community at Palmyra.