This year I had the rare opportunity of joining the Midway Circle CBC. Access to Midway is limited to personnel working there and to volunteers, and I went as volunteer on the annual nesting albatross census, a multi-week tally of all nests, which was no small feat as there are approximately half a million nests! On the day of the CBC, many of the nest-counting team joined the Midway staff to direct our eyes skyward, away from incubating albatrosses nesting on the ground. What we saw and counted were many hundreds of other seabirds, particularly noddies, boobies, frigatebirds, commuting to and from the island, and shorebirds—curlews, turnstones, and plovers lost from sight among crowds of albatross. Daffodil-yellow canaries bucked the trade-winds with surprisingly strong, bounding flight, or fed strewn across the lawns like so many flowers, while huddled knots of mynas sought shelter from the wind. Occasionally, a flurry of silvery White Terns would take wing into the...