Journal Feb 7 McKinn Turtle up digging around last night. Not a very big one. May be 200 lbs. Now I understand why sooty tern dance. To keep ticks off themselves. This place is overrun with ticks. Every foot of ground is peppered with hundreds of ticks. The less sooty moves the more ticks walk on him. The poor incubating sootie are just covered with ticks. The ticks go for the feet legs + bill, [illegible] Bill, legs and last feet in line of preference. Some cases are pretty bad. The ticks like to bulldoze, so consequently the forehead is sometimes pushed clean of skin. Went skin diving today. Saw three sharks. All clearfin type one white tip other two normal tan colored ones (not black tip) Feb 7 banded. 800 sooties 100 Audubons 100 common noddies 80 White throated storm petrels 1 Red tailed tropic 70 bulwer's petrels 1 wandering tattler 2 golden plovers 10 Bristle thytes (corks) 5 wedge tailed shearwaters 1100 Apparently ticks don't bother Procelliformes. And only little harm to noddies. [This is from looking at birds mixed in with sootie]