Birds, birds, birds! Boobies are all around, and tropicbirds, terns, swallow-tailed gulls and frigatebirds are abundant in the sky and on the bushes. There are many frigate chicks in the nests.
Frigatebirds make an "honest living" by capturing flying fish on the wing or by snatching up squid, fish, or fish waste from the surface of the water. But frigates are also known as the "pirates of the air" and this name is derived from the manner in which they steal from others birds that are carrying fish food. Frigates are able to recognize individuals that have full crops. They relentlessly pursue and harry them, and may even seize a booby or tropicbird by the tail or wing. Eventually the frightened bird throws up what it had in its crop. With a swift downward swoop, the piratical frigatebird scoops this food up before it reaches the water.
Other hungry frigatebirds may snatch and cannibalize a neighbor's unguarded egg, or young hatchling with a swift snatch from on the wing. Add to this hazard the likelihood of the egg or chick falling out of the frigate's flimsy nest due to the excited wingbeats of the parents, and it seems a miracle that the frigatebird maintains it's numbers as it does. On the island of Tower the population of frigates is over one hundred thousand individuals.
After watching them flying over the nesting colony and feeding on the wing, there is one thing that cannot be denied. The frigatebird is the most acrobatic and aerial of the birds that fly above the seas.
