12 10-4-63 Heavy rain again during night and most of the day overcast. Skinned bird in the AM and in the afternoon XXX went hunting. A few of the turnstones are very dark and I can see no traces of red in their plumages, and some of these may be Black Turnstones. Went looking, but saw no suspicious birds. Watched a rat feeding on puncture weed for ten minutes and then collected it. Later saw a Bristle-thighed Curlew feeding on the edge of the runway. It was picking a mouse up repeatedly, turning it end to end, and after several minutes of this and shaking, the curlew swallowed the mouse whole. I watched the performance from about 20 feet, and the rodent, a Polynesian Rat, was about 1.5-2 inches in body length: The Curlew had difficulty in swallowing it. On the way back saw another dowitcher fly by, and this one seemed larger (a Long-billed Dowitcher?) than the other one that I collected. Banded all the Masked Boobies on the island, color marking them with red paint XXX at the same time. I believe that we have handled 95-97 percent of all the masked boobies on this island now and that the population is virtually completely tagged. We also have color-marked and banded upwards of 50 Brown Boobies. In the evening after a tantalizing Ann-Margret Flick we went banding and tagged over 100 shearwaters and petrels. A successful day. 10-5-63 S lept in this morning and then up to skin a booby collected last evening. Booby banded and at least several years old in immature plumage: Aged immatures should help to fill in the holes in our knowledge of plumage sequences. Later went tagging seals and suprisingly got 15 more making seven recaptures. There may be 100 or more seals here. We weighed the smallest we've seen yet and it totaled 82 pounds. One giant of a ?, 112" long, 17.5 " high, and 31 inches wide I judged to be at least 700 pounds in weight. saw another sparrow fly overhead just before dark. Bill tried but couldn't find it to collect. Will try again tomorrow. Relaxed in the evening to write let- ters for tomorrow's flight. Work is settled into a rout- ine and I feel that we are beginning to see some fruit to our labors already.