JPL Myers 1976 Journal GRID 3 27 Sure During the early morning hours I tracked a P. melanotus on GRID 3, but due to lack of coordination I didn't have the tape recorder turned on - so data useless. On my way out to the GRID, after dawn before tracking, because of the periodic fits of windlessness, I tried to tape C. pusilla in the Voth Creek area - but the birds and the wind never became sufficiently in place to make anything worthwhile. Note - an arctic fox appeared on GRID 2 - if van atro across, bounded by resident jaegers, harried by phalaropes and longspurs. During the afternoon I wandered about Grids 2 + 3 looking for nuts, photographing vegetation, etc. Relatively little is blooming yet, Pedicularis and Ranunculus niveus being the prominent actors. Dugonia in the troughs has turned a rich green, adding to the visual mosaic of the tundra because of its contrast with the brown polygon centers. Chironomids have emerged - are swarming, as are the Eskimo who today harassed both Nyctea + Stercorarius with on or near the grid. Blestburg throwing stakes and clods of dirt in the air, trampling nests, persecuting the jaegers incessantly. The mystery of the arctic mites continues to puzzle me on both grids. There are not as many P. melanotus as there "should be" - as indicated by P density, by 4% of PP observed earlier, and by 4% of PP in other areas. Mites are distributed unusually over the grids also, particularly #2 - a cluster hugs the road, and some are in the low Carox area on the south of the grid, but otherwise there are few. FAP argues human activity - tracking - has scared the PP away. I agree it is a possibility, but don't think it of major importance because our tracking activity has been light in 40% of some areas on both grids where there are no PP - and where there were last year. One alternative possibility is that tundra cropping has made areas unsuitable for nesting. It seems true that some of the mites are incredibly exposed, lacking the least sort of canopy typical of a P. melanotus nest. Perhaps where cropping is intense, I don't know. But their general fact of low PP makes questions about evolutionary significance of territory