First call

By mid November it was time for the summer season to officially begin (although I'd already been doing my summer work since the start of September). The James Clark Ross arrived to bring the new winterers and summer staff to the island.

After spending over 8 months on the island just the four of us, we were considerably nervous about having new people on the island. Before first call could start we had to seal proof the base. The male Antarctic fur seals had already started returning to claim a territory and await the females. Our raised walk ways seem a particularly attractive territory, which does not help us when we are trying to bring cargo up and down them. So a couple of weeks before first call we had to put up barricades to try to deter the seals from making territories in inconvenient places. We lined up empty due drums all the way from the jetty towards the base, and put heavy rocks on top of weigh them down. Some of the seals did not seem to understand that this meant that they were not supposed to go in that area, and kept climbing over (yes climbing over) the drums. They are insanely strong and use their front flips to hoist themselves up and over. You then had the difficult task of removing them from the area, which isn't easy to do with a 300kg, stubborn, and aggressive animal. It was stressful all round, but by the time first call came we only had one problem seal, which isn't too bad considering the numbers on the beach. 

On the morning of first call we waited on the jetty for the first boat to come in with what seemed like a hundred people on it. Suddenly our quiet little house was rammed with people and we all felt way out of our comfort zone. The newbies arrived on the second boat and we did our best to make them feel at home as we know how overwhelming it is arriving on the island. Jess is my replacement working on albatross, Cian to work on seals, Rob the new tech, Manos IT specialist and Adam the summer base commander. 

After an exhausting day shifting cargo, sorting vegetables for invasive species, and fitting in a few tours to show off the Wandering albatross the boat finally left for the day. I quickly knocked together some pasta (a lot of pasta compared to normal as we had 10 on base compared to the usual 4) and started getting to know our new housemates. It took another couple of days to get all of the cargo ashore and we were delighted to have some new fresh food, as well as post and parcels from home. 

Lost, lost Weddell seal

One September afternoon sitting in the lounge and looking across the bay we noticed a strange looking lump lying on the shore. It definitely wasn't a fur seal and didn't look right to be an elephant or leopard seal. On further investigation it turned out to be a Weddell seal!

This is a fairly rare visitor to Bird Island as they are normally found much further south hanging out on the ice. We were all obviously very excited and rushed around the bay to take a closer look. It looked like a fairly young seal and it spent all afternoon sleeping on the shore.

A snotty looking Weddell seal chilling on the beach

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

Elephant seal pups

This year turned out to be a lucky one for Bird Island residents with two elephant seal pups born on Landing beach, which is the next beach over from us. One morning when Craig was heading over to SSB (the seal study beach) to do some work on the infrastructure there, when we got an excited call over the radio. For a few days there had been a couple of fat females lying on the beach next to one of the colossal males. On this particular morning Craig had spotted a black lump lying next to one of the females, and on closer inspection it turned out to be a pup!

Elephant seal mother protecting her new born pup from a brown skua that fancied a taste of umbilical cord

We all rushed over to take a look from a distance at the newborn. Elephant seal mothers are quite nervous, so we didn’t want to get too close in case we scared her and she abandoned the pup. Mother and pup were being harassed by a pair of brown skuas that saw the pups birth as a hearty meal opportunity. The skuas kept grabbing at the pups umbilical cord trying to rip bits off. The mother was getting very agitated with them and tried to protect her pup as best she could. It had  been slim pickings for the skuas since they arrived back on the island after winter, so they weren’t giving up without a fight. 

Over the next couple of days the pup was joined by a second pup, born to an adjacent female. The pups then spent most of their time sleeping, or suckling the extremely fatty milk from their mothers. They had a lot growing to do before their mothers left them after only a couple of weeks of nursing. The pups seemed to grow at a huge rate (up to 3.6kg per day), and then began moulting their black thick fur, to reveal the typical brown elephant seal fur below. 

I think this one was a bit surprised about being born onto a busy, noisy beach

The mothers left the pups when they still looked far too young to us, but the pups seemed content enough, and the smaller of the two was often seen attempting to suckle from the other pup. Eventually they began to explore their surroundings and paddle in the water. Recently one of them swam around to Freshwater Beach where the base is located. Hannah and Cian (our two seal biologists) had a close encounter with it when it decided they looked interesting and came over to investigate them. 

Ele pup taking a rest

Now they are fully moulted they are ready to venture out to sea to begin feeding themselves as they have lost a lot of weight since their mothers left. Let’s hope that in a few years they return to Bird Island to breed, rather than heading to the South Georgia mainland.

The two pups once their mums had gone back to sea. The male fur seal in the background seemed to think that they were female fur seals not two week old ele pups!