I realise that February has come and gone without a single
post on the blog. I haven’t really got an excuse for that, I thought that
nothing much had happened. However when I started thinking about it I came up
with a fair list of stuff. With these things the longer you put them off the
more monumental the task becomes, but as it is a rainy Saturday morning I
thought it was about time I got something written.
Towards the start of the month Jen showed me the final task
that I hadn’t yet done, diet sampling. Every two weeks for around 3 months I
have to take diet samples from 5 Black-browed albatross chicks and 5
Grey-headed albatross chicks. This is a very smelly job and you tend to end up
very dirty. All the other base members know when you’ve been out sampling as
the boot room ends up stinking. We definitely aren’t the only culprits for
stinks in the boot room, seals and penguins have their own aromas.
Once the samples are collected Jen and I have to sort
through them and estimate the percentages of types of food in the samples. Some
parts including squid beaks, fish otoliths (tiny round bones from fish ears),
and krill are retained for me to attempt to identify in the winter.
I’ve found it quite enjoyable doing some lab work, as it’s
been a pretty long time since I’ve been in a lab! It makes a change from being
out in the field every day, and it’s always good to learn some new skills.
February has been a month of changes. Since arriving on the island in November we
had seen no sign of outside life, this month we have had two ship calls from
the James Clark Ross. A ship call is a day of great excitement! The first one
called in to collect Jaume (seal biologist) who had been on the island for four
months. It also brought us a sack of potatoes and some eggs (a source of great
excitement) and post! I received a parcel from one of my best friends Zara,
which I really appreciated. I’d say post day is much better than Christmas at
home, as no matter what it is, it’s great to hear from the outside world and to
know people haven’t forgotten about the few of us living on this little rock in
the middle of no-where.
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| Jon's leg after the seal incident |
The ship’s doctor came ashore to take a look at Jon’s leg
which had been subjected to an unfortunate run in with a male Antarctic fur
seal. We’d done our best to patch him up by administering some local
anaesthetic then giving it a good clean out with a toothbrush and a lot of disinfectant.
With bites, especially seal bites, you wouldn’t normally sew them up because of
the amount of bacteria in the wounds. However in this case as it was a fairly
big gash and just below the knee, the doctor decided it needed stitching. We
had only been practicing our stitching a few days previously so the doctor let
a couple of base members have a go including Jon himself!
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| South Georgia Pipit |
Just 10 days later it was another ship day! This time we
lost Jerry who had been having some tooth issues and so has been sent back to
the Falklands to see the dentist, he should be back in about 2 and a half
weeks. From 9 original base members we were down to 7, but Iain, another seal
biologist arrived to help out Hannah and Jon, so we were back to 8. Iain has a
lot of experience of Bird Island as he wintered here some years ago when he was
doing the same job as I’m doing, and he has been back on and off over the
years.
The ship also brought us our first load of “freshies”-
including lettuce, peppers, aubergine, bananas, oranges, grapes, avocados......
I won’t list everything but we were all thrilled after having no fresh veg for
the last 3 months. It’s hard to imagine with the availability of whatever fruit
or veg you could wish for in the UK, just how happy a few lettuces came make
you. We also got four bags of post! I got a parcel from my grandparents and two
parcels from Luke. I was very pleased with the high percentage of chocolate the
parcels contained as well as photographs from home, and new music and films.
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| Making friends with a seal pup |
Last month it was the Gentoo chick weighing and census, this
month it was the Macaroni penguins turn. It’s a bit different for the Macs as
it would be impossible to count all of the chicks because of Big Mac- the
largest colony on the island which has 40,000 pairs of Macaroni penguins.
Instead Jerry and Ruth walk a transect through the colony counting chicks as
they go. For the chick weighing session
everyone from base trudged over to Little Mac (the main study colony- of a much
more manageable size), apart from Jon
who was looking after the base and his leg! We had to catch and weigh 100
chicks, and also issue them with a pit tag, which is the same as a microchip
you would give to your cat or dog. The reason for the tags is that to access
Little Mac colony the birds come through a narrow passage and have to cross the
penguin weighbridge, that weighs them and scans their chips. To get the
maximise use of the data we need as many penguins as possible to be chipped.
February has been particularly exciting for me as the first
Wandering albatross chick hatched on the 26th, after being incubated
for 76 days. Of all the species on the island I have most been looking forward
to the hatching of the Wanderers as I am going to get to spend the whole winter
watching them grow up and finally fledge around December time.
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| The first hatching Wandering Albatross chick. |
Every day I have to go and check the nests to see which
chicks have hatched, hopefully they should all have hatched in the next three
weeks. For new born birds they are fairly big. They just about fit in my hand
but won’t for much longer.
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| Wandering Albatross family |
This month we did a search and rescue exercise to make sure
that we all know what we are doing over the winter. At first I didn’t realise
it was an exercise, so when Jen radioed to say she had fallen and thought she
had broken her ankle, I thought she meant it! After a couple of minutes I
remembered that we were supposed to be doing an exercise that week and relaxed
a bit. Craig and Hannah were sent to assess the casualty, whilst Ruth and I got
together the stretcher and splints. We then headed over to the far end of Main
Bay with the stretcher, which is extremely awkward and heavy to carry. We made
it eventually after both nearly falling over on the rocks and managed to get a
splint on Jen’s leg and her onto the stretcher. We practiced carrying the
stretcher with just three people, as in winter that will be all we have. We
managed it, but Jen is pretty light. If one of the guys is the casualty I don’t
think we are going to be able to carry them back to base and will probably have
to pitch a tent and await help..... which might take a few days.
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| Search and Rescue exercise. |
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| A panoramic view from the top of Tonk. On the left is Willis Islands, then La Roche and South Georgia. |
I’ve had a bit of spare time this month to do a bit of
adventuring, and as we’ve had a few nice days I thought it would be worth
getting up some of the peaks on the island. The first one was Tonk which I walk
along the base of regularly. From the top you can see most of the island, apart
from the bit behind La Roche (the highest peak). It was glorious being up there
in the sun shine and with relatively little wind. I sat up there for a while
watching the Wanderers and Light Mantled Sooty albatrosses wheeling past. I
then decided to go and find a sooty chick as I hadn’t seen one before as they
nest in fairly inaccessible places. Eventually I managed to find one. Sooty’s
are renowned for being terrible are raising chicks. The vast majority of nests
fail, so it’s a good job that they are so long lived otherwise I don’t think
that they would last very long as a species. It was worth the look as the chick
was very different to the other albatross chicks around the island, and looks
as though it’s wearing a mask across its eyes.
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| Light Mantled Sooty Albatross chick |
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| The view from the top of Tonk, with base and La Roche in the background. |
The second adventure was a trip up La Roche, the islands
highest peak. It isn’t all that high by mountain standards at 356m but you get great
views of the whole island and South Georgia. Craig and I hiked up in
increasingly worsening weather, it started off fairly nice but was snowing
before long. At one point we thought about turning back as it was really windy
and there are some narrow parts to traverse with big drops below. We found a
ridge to hunker down behind, had some snacks and decided to go for it. Fairly
close to the top I spotted an Antarctic Tern chick, which was very exciting as
they are not common things to find. I suspected there might be a chick around
as the adults had been screeching at us most of the way up, but I hadn’t
expected to find it! We made it up to the top and had fairly good views and a
lot of wind. We took a short cut on the way back down, straight down the scree
slopes which was fun but I wouldn’t have wanted to go up that way.
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| Antarctic Tern chick |
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| At the top of La Roche with South Georgia in the background on a very cold and windy day. |
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| Sunset over Willis Islands |
I guess more things have happened in February that I
thought......
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