Return of the albatross

Grey head awaiting the return of its partner

September is the month when the winter finally feels like it is coming to an end. After months of deserted colonies the albatross finally start to return. From the 1st September I started visiting the Grey-headed albatross colonies to await the first bird coming back. The first bird was a female seen back on the 13th September in colony E. She was first observed on the island in 1989 as an adult making her over 30 years old! Since then she has raised three successful chicks out of 17 breeding attempts. Hopefully the 2014 season will see her fourth success.

Grey head coming in to land

Within a couple of week the grey heads had returned in force and the colonies are noisy once again. They have been making renovations to the nests and are getting reacquainted with the partners that they haven’t seen for almost two years since they last bred. I have been visiting the main study colonies every day and recording which individuals are back. This is fairly easy to do, but very time consuming, as most of the birds have plastic darvic rings that can easily be read at a distance. 

Any birds returning without darvics tend to be young birds returning for the first time. Chicks do not receive darvics only a metal ring as the mortality rate is too high to justify the expense of the darvics. I've been doing my best to catch as many young birds as possible and put a darvic on them. This only takes a couple of minutes but it very valuable to do, as it reduces future disturbance trying to read the metal ring. 

Grey head pair preening each other to renew their bond after a couple of years apart

The Black-browed albatross are slightly later to return as their breeding season is shorter than the grey heads so they don't have to get started quite as soon. It wasn't long though before they were home and their loud distinctive call was filling the air. It's definitely a noise I'd missed over winter.

 Before the eggs are laid I had to put nest tags in every nest that might possibly be used so that once the birds start breeding I'll be able to keep track of each nest and can record lay dates, and both adults ring numbers. This was a pretty big task as the colonies are spread out across the island, and I needed to put in hundreds of tags. I had a pretty heavy bag for a couple of days!

Black browed albatross pair on their nest site