Another week on Bird Island

Another week has gone by and there are a lot more seals on the beaches.  It’s getting pretty noisy at night now with all the females continuously calling their pups and males fighting for the best territories at all hours of the night. I’m still sleeping pretty well though as I’ve been absolutely shattered from all of the work I’ve been doing. 

Female Antarctic fur seal and blonde pup (which are pretty rare)

This week I have been up to check on the Wandering albatross chicks every day to see which have fledged. It’s getting a bit more difficult as they are all getting more mobile, and I guess living up to their name! Usually they stay near the nest but now that they are getting ready to leave the island they have been wandering all over the place. Quite a few have already gone, and we think that the average fledging date is going to be a lot earlier than last year- but we still need to check the data. 

Wandering albatross chick in the snow

The twice weekly Black head and Grey head albatross checks are still busy and I’ve been doing quite a few of the rounds on my own, I think I still need a bit of practice at following the exact route around the colonies that Jen set up, as I keep going completely wrong and spend ages trying to get back on track. I’m sure I’ll have got the hang of it soon enough. We deployed some GLS trackers on some of the Black brows that are going to stay on until around a week after the eggs have hatched. That should be sometime towards the end of the month, I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the chicks! 

In the last week the number of adult Wandering albatrosses returning to the island has dramatically increased and I have seen them beginning to pair up again and start courtship. They make a sound like they are blowing bubbles when they are trying to impress each other, it’s really cool! Soon enough we will start having the first eggs, so another big job is taking out all of the stakes that denoted where the nests were last year, and preparing them for this year’s new nests. The stakes are dotted across the whole island so we are taking them out bit by bit. 

We had a lot of snow one night this week which made doing the albatross rounds more fun as on some parts you could slide down the hill on the snow. It was nice to see the island covered in white, but it did make it more difficult to walk around as the holes in between the tussac were disguised, so you could fall down a lot more easily. Most of the snow has gone now but we have been having small snow showers almost every day. It is supposed to be going into summer on the island so I don’t think we should get too much more snow, but the weather is very unpredictable here so who knows!

I had a trip over to SSB the seal study beach and helped with the recording of new pups born on the beach. This meant I got to cuddle a day old pup which was lovely! They are pretty cute when they are first born but don’t seem to stay that way for long!

Sooty Mantled albatross

On a weekly basis we check the nests of the Sooty Mantled albatrosses. I went out with Jen and Jerry to check some nests that Jen had already found. They nest just underneath bare rock in tussac, so to get to them you have to go across some pretty steep bits of slope. We checked all of the nests and none had failed which is great. They are not the best birds at breeding and tend to fail quite often.  Some of the sootys had GLS trackers put on them last year and we are checking each bird to see if it has one. So far we’ve just got one back. 

Giant Petrel  chick- now big enough to be left alone.

South Georgia Pintail- our only duck species

A friendly Elephant seal

This week was also the first time I had to cook for everyone. I made toad in the hole with cauliflower cheese and veggies. It went down pretty well. The cook duty also involves baking the bread for the day and thankfully my two loaves turned out alright, as I think there may have been a few grumbles if there was no decent bread for toast and sandwiches.

A clear day with the mountains of South Georgia visible