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Transcription
Gill, Douglas
1964
couple of Bulwer's Petrels flew by. Later on in the morning a couple
of frigatebirds and a white-tailed tropicbird flew by. And late in
the morning a Fairy Tern flew by. We had a big lunch (really a dinner
of chicken and vegetables) and continued the watch for sea birds.
Occasionally we would go to the lab to help organize stuff, or to pack
our own personal box. Late in the morning we also had two Newell's
(Manx) Shearwaters go by. Late in the afternoon around 1700, we had
two odd shearwater-petrel type things go by which were first tentatively
identified as New Zealand Shearwaters, but later suspected to be
Cook's Petrels. They were small (around Bulwer's size) fast flyers,
with white on the head and upper wing. We ate dinner with some unknown
officer. More watche after supper. Bob Long spent the whole afternoon
and evening frightfully seasick on the flying bridge. We(Pete and I)
had a talk with the "doc" of the ship about travel and guns, etc.
Then I showered, wrote this, and hit the sack at 2100.
June 3--I slept through Reveille, somehow I just didn't hear it. So
I awoke at 10 to 8 ran up to the wardroom and found I couldn't get
anything to eat. So I went up to the flying bridge to stand watch. W
saw some odd black and white shearwaters go by which we (Doug and I)
concluded were Newell's Shearwaters, a local race of the Manx. Before
I had gotten up there Fred and Doug had seen white then called White-
necked Petrels. Some more of these flew by and after searching the
books we concluded that they were Kermadec Petrels. We were having
an awful time identifying these pelagics which none of us knew.
Finally we got the shot guns out to collect these. Larry got all