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

April

The days have been getting progressively shorter on Bird Island since my last post. The sun doesn’t rise now until around 10:00am and has faded away by around 7:00pm. This is in contrast to when I first arrived on the island and it never truly seemed to go dark at all. We have to be increasingly vigilant to ensure that all of the evening checks are done before it goes dark, so we can ensure that no escaping light will attract Prions that could fly into the building and be killed (if not from the impact by hungry Skua’s). 

The weather is starting to chill down- an icy morning on the island

It has been another busy month workwise, and I have been out ringing all of the Grey-headed albatross chicks from colonies E and B, which totals around 200 birds. That is far fewer than the Black-browed albatross chicks, but still a substantial number to get through. Now that the ringing is complete I won’t have any chicks to ring until mid-August when it’s time for the Wandering Albatross chicks to receive their very own rings. 

Ringing a Grey-headed albatross chick

Other than ringing I have finally finished obtaining diet samples from the Grey-headed and Black-browed albatross chicks. I have a total of 30 samples from each species from the three months that their parents have been feeding them. I’ve analysed the main constituents i.e. amount of fish, cephlapod (squid), krill, carrion and other types of food.  Over the winter months I will be spending time in the lab identifying squid beaks, and fish otoliths to get the specific species that they have been eating.

Black-browed albatross chick almost ready to fledge

In the last week the Black-browed albatross chicks have started fledging. In a way I’m sad to see them go, but it’s nice to have seem them through from eggs, to increasingly large fluff balls, to fully grown smart looking birds. I expect in the next couple of weeks for most of them to be gone, which will be very strange. Although having been visiting the colonies on a daily basis, it will be nice to have a break from it, and time to do other things. 

Black-browed chick practicing for take off

The Grey-headed albatross chicks are a little behind in their development, even though they are older than the Black-brows.  Most of them still have quite a lot of fluff, and won’t be fledging for at least another couple of weeks. 

I’m hoping to see at least one chick fledge, as I didn’t manage to see any of the Wandering albatross chicks go this year. It isn’t an easy thing to predict though, and the chicks always seem to know when you are watching and suddenly become very shy. I’ve spent a fair bit of time watching them madly flapping their wings and jumping up and down, unfortunately most of them seem to face the hill rather than away from it, so I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere too soon. 

Gentoo penguin on a cold day

The Wandering albatross chicks have nearly all been left on their own, with both parents at sea gathering food for the insatiably hungry chicks. Some of the chicks clearly have very attentive parents as they have grown massively in the last few weeks. They must now weigh at least a couple of kilograms, in comparison to the approximate 300g they weighed when hatched. As you approach most of them sit up as tall as they can, with their feet sticking out in front of them. They still have a big round body with a thin neck and little head on top. At this age they are mainly all stomach, which they need to be as the parents can bring back 1kg of food at a time!

Wandering albatross chick

The number of penguins of the island has diminished to the point where it is fairly rare to see one. Craig and I managed to get a last trip over to Big Mac, the largest Macaroni penguin colony on the island (second biggest in the world). There were still a decent number of penguins around busy moulting and growing new feathers ready for a winter spent at sea. However it was no-where near the 80,000 birds that were there earlier in the season. We spent an enjoyable couple of hours sitting at the bottom of the colony watching the birds leaping out of the sea when the waves allowed and rushing forward onto dry land before another wave could catch them and pull them back in. Penguins are tough birds! The ferocity of the waves was unbelievable, and you would often see birds being tossed against the rocks repeatedly before managing to stagger out to safety. They seemed none the worse for it, and would spend a couple of minutes preening before joining the queue to head up to the top of the colony. That is one thing I’ve learnt about penguins, they are very English in their queuing habits! After a couple of hours of watching we decided we had better leave, especially after one of the big waves nearly managed to soak us up on the big rock we had been watching from. I certainly didn’t want to have a go at getting out of the sea like the Macaronis did, I would have had no chance. 

Macaroni penguins on their way into the colony

Only a couple of weeks later and I could only spot around 40 penguins on the whole colony, and we won’t be seeing any until the start of next summer in September, when they return to start the breeding season once more. 

Macaroni penguins trying to get back onto dry land

It is not only the penguins that have been disappearing, the seal pups have all gone. Over a period of about a week I noticed that instead of seeing pups everywhere, there were suddenly hardly any left. They are about three or four months old now and have finally felt the urge to head out to sea where they will learn to feed themselves. The females have been returning to find their pups gone, and hang around for a couple of days to see if they come back. Before long the females will depart too leaving a very quiet beach.  

The winter brought us our first storm, which meant a day inside at the wind was very strong and huge waves were driving into the bay and crashing high up on the rocks. The next morning the wind had died down but masses of seaweed had washed up onto our beach. It was over a metre deep in places, and was making life difficult for the penguins that had been on the beach overnight. They struggled to get back to open water clambering over the kelp, and continuously getting it wrapped around their legs and falling. The seals on the other hand seemed to like their new comfy bed, and looked at home curled up on the seaweed. 

On one of our trips to the albatross colonies Jerry and I found lots of washed up marine life on Evermann beach. There were numerous types of starfish, sea squirts, strange looking cephlapods (they look like aliens!). We bagged up a few samples to bring back to base to try and identify. Whilst hunting through the seaweed for interesting specimens I came across a bird ring that had probably washed up in the storm. It was an old American ring, which were the first type used on the island, so I knew it was going to be old. It turned out that the ring had been put onto a Black-browed albatross back in the 1961/1962 season! Who knows how long it has been in the sea, but it’s a good find. 

Variety of Starfish washed up on the beach after the storm

Giant cephlapod washed up on the beach (very alien like)

Hannah and I went out to check how the Light-mantled Sooty albatross chicks were doing, but unfortunately we couldn’t find a single one. They are still more nests to be checked but it isn’t a good sign. The Sooty’s tend to have the worst reproductive performance of all the albatross species’ that we have on Bird Island. It is still disappointing to find empty nests where there were once chicks. On the way back from checking the nests we ventured up to the only accessible cave on the island. It isn’t very big but you could sleep in there if you wished as it was fairly dry at the back. We might have to try it out over the winter. 

Light-mantled Sooty albatross hanging out in the Grey head colony

Star Wars day

Socially we haven’t had a particularly busy month, but we did have another BBQ and hot tub evening, as well as celebrating Star Wars day on the 4^th May. We all dressed up as characters from the film, had a nice meal, played cludeo, and watched the fan made version on Start Wars episode 4.

I apologise for the delay in updating the blog, but the internet here has been really slow over the last couple of weeks. I will attempt to get another update done soon, as lots of exciting things have been happening (Leopard seals!)

Birds, birds, birds!

I realise that I’ve been absolutely awful at updating the blog recently, which I apologise for. Even though we are now in the middle of winter, I’ve been pretty busy. A fair amount of things have happened in the last month and a half. I’m going to split it up into different sections, so this isn’t just one mammoth post.

The first one is going to be about the birds on the island.

 There has been even more change with the complete departure of the Grey-headed Albatross chicks. They finished just before mid winter on the 20^th June. Compared to last year they were fledging a lot later, which meant more daily trips to the colonies. It was strange going up to colony B for the last time which overlooks Big Mac penguin colony. Both were completely empty and silent; so different from the main season when the noise of the penguins can be heard over a kilometre away, and the albatross chicks are begging for food, and the adults are chattering amongst themselves. However although I was a little sad to see the place so deserted, as least the chicks that have left the island are hopefully beginning what could be a long life roaming the oceans and returning to the same colony in a few years to breed. In around three months time the adults will be back for another few busy months of chick rearing. 

Wanderer chick practicing flapping.

The only type of albatross now left on the island is the Wandering Albatrosses. The chicks are growing rapidly in size and some look almost bigger than their parents. The chicks will end up weighing more than their parents, and will lose their baby fat just before they fledge, so they can actually get off the ground! I often see the parents returning to feed the chick hearty meals of fish and squid. They get fed on average once a week, with the two parents flying potentially thousands of miles between feedings. 

Once a month everyone on base goes out and checks on all of the chicks across the island to check for failures. The last couple of months have had very few failures, this is because the chicks are now so large that the other predators (Giant Petrels/Skuas) are too small to be able to take them on (unless they are injured or sick). The main reason for failure is if one of the parents is killed by a long line fishing boat, and the other cannot usually manage to provide enough food and the chick starves. We have one chick that this has happened to named “Tiny Tim”. Since April Tim has been much smaller than the other chicks surrounding him. I’ve been expecting to find him dead every time I visit, but somehow he keeps surviving. It’s now mid July and he is still alive and has gotten a little bigger, but is very under weight for his age. It has been known for small chicks to fledge, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that Tim is going to be one of the lucky ones, and his one remaining parent keeps doing such a good job. I’ll keep you updated with how he does. 

One of the other more notable Wanderer chicks is Scruffy chick. Whilst I was doing this month’s checks on the chicks I realised that one was missing. I found the empty nest and presumed the chick had died and been dragged off as a tasty snack for a Giant Petrel. I began searching though the tussac grass to find the body when I suddenly spotted the head, which moved! As I approached I realised that the chick seemed to be below ground level, it looked very strange. When I got to the chick all I could see was its head and a little bit of its back down a deep hole in the ground. The chick was still alive but was pretty weak, it barely had the energy to try and defend itself from me.  I dug out some of the soil that had fallen onto the chick and eventually managed to get my arm underneath the chick’s breast to try and pull it out. The chick was well and truly wedged down the hole, which was full of sticky mud and it was not giving the chick up easily. After about 15 minutes I managed to heave the chick out and lay flat on my back holding the chick, both of us exhausted from the exertion. The poor chick was soaked to the skin in mud, and seemed to have a leg injury. I don’t know how long the chick had been down the hole, but it must have been quite some time, and through its struggling it had twisted its leg in a funny angle. I wasn’t sure if the leg was broken but it didn’t look good. I put the chick back on its nest where it lay flat exhausted. It was a pretty distressing experience for both of us, but at least he wasn’t going to die half buried under ground. As soon as I left the chick I saw a Giant Petrel land next to the nest. It’s amazing how quickly they can spot weakness. 

Scruffy Wanderer chick a few days after rescue.

A few days later I went back to check on the chick with Hannah. I was fully expecting to find him dead, but miraculously the chick was still alive and trying to hide underneath some tussac. Wanderer chicks generally feel safest while sitting on the nest mound, as they can see all around them, and it was the place that they were born. This chick clearly was very scared and was trying to hide under the grass. Hannah and I made some improvements to his nest, by adding pieces of grass to the nest cup and then placed him back on top. He immediately perked up and started busily rearranging his pieces of grass so they were comfy. The injured leg looked a lot better, and he was able to sit up and put weight on it. It still doesn’t look perfect but I have a lot more hope for his future. He was waggling his tail feathers and making contented noises to himself. I’ll keep going back every week to check on him and you never know he might recover. 

Adult Wandering Albatross back to feed its chick.

On the penguin front there are only Gentoo penguins around now. Not in as big numbers as in the summer months but there are often a couple of them on the beach in front of base, and bigger numbers on the breeding beaches. Unfortunately for the penguins the Leopard seals have taken a liking to the taste of them and we’ve found a couple injured on the beach. I’ve been working on my penguin calls but I’m not very good. Sometimes I can get a response, I’ll keep working on it. 

It’s not only penguins that are becoming seal snacks, in the last week we’ve found two dead Giant Petrels that have been munched. This isn’t unknown but we definitely see less of it, there isn’t a massive amount of meat and you would have thought they’d have more chance of escape being able to fly. 

In Skua news there is now only one Skua on the island- Scratchy our adopted pet Skua. All of the rest has left for South Georgia and more food, but with his broken wing Scratchy has to remain here with us. He spends his days hanging around the kitchen door, taking copious baths in the stream (we think he has OCD) and sleeping. The rest of the Skuas probably won’t be back until September ready for the seal pups being born and a ready food supply on hand. Mmm placenta! 

Scratchy ice skating.