Ocean Watch

Tern Island trip

ends with gifts

My three-month stint on Tern Island as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service volunteer will end on Tuesday. About this, I feel like Dorothy leaving Oz.

I want to go home, but it will be hard to leave. Some of life's greatest gifts came to me here.

One is friendship. Most of the biologists living and working here are in their 20s. I am 55. Not once, however, did anyone treat me like an old lady.

We worked shoulder to shoulder, wielding sledgehammers, swimming in strong currents and repairing everything from door knobs to desalinators.

My colleagues assumed I could do anything, and if I didn't know how, I would figure it out. I love them for that. I will miss these new friends dearly.

Other gifts I received from Tern are countless fond memories. One that will always stand out is that of biologist Alex Wegmann walking around, working, with a booby bird standing on his head.

That day, four of us were walking abreast of the island counting tropic birds. About halfway through, I looked left, and there was Alex, strolling along with a chicken-size seabird perched on his head like it was the most normal thing in the world.

And when Tern's red-footed booby chicks start flying, it is. Combine these young birds' need to rest with their natural curiosity, plus a fearlessness of people, and you have birds hitching rides on human heads. It never ceased to crack me up.

Watching wildlife on Tern was not always fun. I will never forget the poor sooty tern chicks with deformed or permanently injured wings. Day after day, we watched parent birds diligently feed these doomed offspring.

But that isn't the worst of it. Around the time these well-fed chicks would normally take off, the parents leave. Since seabirds can go a long time between meals, it takes weeks for these grounded chicks to starve to death.

I've shed tears over those suffering animals.

More often, though, nature here made my spirits soar. Recently, a black-footed albatross decided to lay an egg in a brown noddy nest. This wouldn't be remarkable except that a brown noddy chick still occupied the nest.

No worries. The little noddy cuddled up beneath the majestic albatross's wing or tail. When the chick's parents arrived with food, the youngster would totter out, accept its meal and then scurry back to its deluxe accommodations.

The albatross ignored the noddy family entirely.

I made some lifetime friends on Tern Island and worked with wildlife to my heart's content. But I received even another great gift here: e-mail.

Every time I sat down to write, I thought about the letters I received from family, friends and readers. The comments in them often touched my heart, occasionally made me laugh and always improved my writing.

My sincere thanks to all who wrote, as well as to my busy friend who sifted through tons of junk mail, copied the letters and forwarded them to me each week. I also thank my wonderful sister for posting the pictures I sent home on my Web site. More are coming.

My time on Tern has been a grand adventure, and even though I hate to say goodbye, I'm excited to get back to my family, my friends and my island.

There's no place like home, there's no place like home.