The din they made at night taxed the tempers of civilian workers and servicemen. When the sooty terns arrive at nesting time they do not immediately alight on the island. For a time the flocks' come in after dark and leave before daybreak, filling the night hours with screaming while on the wing. When they finally land, there is an incessant night din because some birds are always aloft and screaming.
Even the tired man finds sleep difficult. The shear waters and petrels all have different degrees of mournful and wailing cries, varying in intensity throughout the night. Their burrows are often made near sleeping quarters, and their dismal voices banish sleep, often resulting in war on the birds. One man told me that he had slept in a dugout. A bird dug its burrow beside a ventilator pipe to the room. When its song became unbearable he would go out and drive the bird away, but, as soon as be was comfortably in bed again, it would begin afresh. When a flashlight is suddenly turned on the birds are dazzled and many birds were thus destroyed. Some birds, of course, come to grief striking trees, overhead wires, planes and buildings, but such fatalities are fewer than would be supposed, considering their original flat, treeless island nesting places.
An officer recently returned from Midway has assured me that few albatrosses are killed by the planes. The shear waters and petrels on the more populated islands may still be condemned when they undermine concrete paths and the underpinnings of buildings. A threat to smaller birds on some islands are rats that have found their way ashore because of wharves being built and from modern war landing craft that run right up on the beaches. On islands where ships have to lie off, and all landing is done by small boats, rats do not readily get ashore. Rats have only recently gained access to Midway but have exterminated two imported land birds on the island and reduced wild house canaries from five hundred to thirty.
If the rats had not been effectively coin bated they would have greatly reduced the numbers of some small sea birds, notably the lovely little white tern and gentle Bulwer's petrel. However, after the killing of such large numbers of birds a recent estimate by two expert bird counters gave albatrosses on the two islands of Midway as 135,000: wedge-tailed shear-waters, 60,000; Bonin Island petrels. 25,000; red-tailed tropic birds. 19,000; white terns, 20,000; sooty terns. 170,000. Since it is difficult to take counts of some sea birds, especially burrowing birds, these counts may be low for some species.
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