Island Smells

As you can imagine there is quite an odor in a large seabird colony such as Midway. With more than 1.5 million seabirds living and visiting a small space such as Sand Island there is a lot of guano deposited. There are also thousands of decomposing, dead chicks that are part of the natural cycle. When you step off the plane the smell is very strong, and for me was still pretty intense when I got outside my first morning here. Interestingly, the intensity of the odor diminishes over a few days and I rarely notice it now. I've read that our sense of smell becomes desensitized pretty quickly to strong odors, and this beautiful, smelly seabird colony is a perfect example.