Time flies when you’re having fun or when you are in the accelerated time zone of Bird Island

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. 

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! 

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.  

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 26^th, 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. 

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. 

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. 

Search and Rescue exercise.

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. 

Light Mantled Sooty Albatross chick

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. 

Antarctic Tern chick

At the top of La Roche with South Georgia in the background on a very cold and windy day.

Sunset over Willis Islands

I guess more things have happened in February that I thought......

Penguin wrangling and a spot of camping

The Gentoo penguin chicks are very quickly growing up and most of them are looking like adults now. They are no longer big balls of fluff, but have actual feathers ready to put to use in the sea. Some of them still have some fluff and look like they are wearing fur coats, scarves or hats, but the majority are ready to take the plunge and start swimming. 

Penguin weighing team looking pretty dirty- photo by Tamsin Bell

This can mean only one thing- time for the annual Gentoo chick census and weighing session. All of the chicks on the island had to be counted. To make this as accurate as possible at least 4 people would go out and count the same chicks, and repeat it until we were within 5% accuracy of each other. Penguin chicks are fairly fast so it required some co-ordination to stop chicks running around and being counted twice or not at all. After a few days of travelling to the various colonies on the island Jerry added up the figures, and we all placed our bets. The prize was a giant chocolate chip cookie with a white chocolate chip penguin on it. The winner was Ruth (only around 200 out). There were over 4000 chicks, a lot of penguins to count! This year the Gentoos’ seem to be doing really well  and we have seen the highest numbers in the last few years. 

Jen getting ready to do some penguin catching

Every year we also have to weigh 100 Gentoo chicks on Johnson beach, so it was a full day out for everyone (except Jaume who had to man the base). For the first time we were able to walk from base along the beaches to Johnson, it really shows how few seals are left! We were armed with nets, and bags to weigh the chicks in. We split into teams- penguin catchers, penguin weighers and data recorder. Catching penguins is a messy job. The stereotypical image of cute penguins looking pristine on some ice or the beach is just wrong. Yes they may but cute, but they are very dirty and they tend to projectile poo everywhere, usually when you have picked them up. By the time we had caught and weighed 100, we were all absolutely filthy! It was great fun though and lovely to get to cuddle some penguins. 

We also saw a Chin strap penguin on Johnson beach which is a species I had never seen before. I think he may have been a bit lost as he was completely on his own with thousands of Gentoo penguins, but he didn’t seem to mind. He would get the occasional chick coming to beg him for food but he quickly put them in their place. They used to breed on Bird Island, but haven’t for the last few years. He was the fourth species of penguin that I’ve seen on the island. 

In the last couple of weeks I have spent two nights away from base. It feels really weird to “go away” for the night, but it’s a good break from base life. The first night was the wintering team’s trip to the “Love Shack”- a hut on the other side of the island by the huge Macaroni penguin colony. Don’t ask why it’s called that but it’s the official name (there is even a plaque by the door). Craig had installed a new stove, so we wanted to try it out, and thought it would be a good bonding session for us. In the winter we won’t all be able to stay away from base over night as two people have to be on base in case anything goes wrong, so it was one of our only chances to get away before the rest of the team leave us. 

W e had an excellent dinner of spicy pasta, and spent the evening playing card games, having quite a few drinks and dancing the night away. It turns out the new stove is really good and kept us toasty all night. The only downside was the weather, we were hoping to be able to sit outside and watch the penguin colonies, but once again we had driving mank (i.e. foggy and damp) which has been the theme of the last few weeks. Never mind though, plenty of time to see penguins here! 

Chin Strap Penguin (first one I've seen on Bird Island)

The second night away was a camping trip in Molly meadows to try and catch some Blue Petrels to deploy GLS tags on them. Ruth and Jerry had found some burrows that contained Blue Petrel chicks. Blue Petrels mainly come back to feed their chicks at night because in the day time they are easy prey for other birds such as Skuas and Giant Petrels (Geeps). We put twigs across the burrows and every 15 minutes checked to see if the sticks had been knocked over. If they had then it was time to “fist some burrows”- stick your arm down and see if the adult bird is in there. We managed to get two birds during the night, which was good as that was all we needed to get. I ringed one and put a GLS on its leg which hopefully Jerry and I will get back next year. It was nice to do some work with some smaller birds, I was starting to forget what it was like! At 5am we gave up checking the burrows as it was starting to get light and there was less bird activity- and we were all absolutely shattered! We managed a few hours sleep before trudging back to base for sausage sandwiches. 

In my last blog entry I mentioned about the sound recording devices that we deployed on the Black browed albatrosses. Unfortunately this project hasn’t really worked out as one of the nests failed so the adult has left the island, and the second one is no longer guarding the chick on the nest. Once the adults stop guarding the chicks they only come back to feed them, it is therefore very unlikely that we will be at the nest when that bird is there. Jen and I have been trying our best to get the tag back, and spent 5 hours one afternoon waiting near the nest to no avail. You never know though we might be lucky..... 

The 31^st January is an important day on Bird Island as it is the annual census day for the Wandering Albatross. During the course of the day the whole island has to be checked and the number of active Wandering albatross nests needs to be counted. Luckily the whole team helps out, so Jen and I are not left to do it all by ourselves. In total at the end of the day we had counted just over 700 nests, which sounds a lot but we were a bit disappointed. Two years previous (when these birds would last have bred) there were over 800 nests. So what has happened to those 200 birds???  

Friendly Wanderer

In other Wandering albatross news the last chick from our study area fledged! Chick 173 has finally lost the last of his fluff and has taken to the air to head out to sea. It was sad for them all to be gone, but hopefully they will survive to come back to the island in about 5 years time. 

It’s been getting busy for the seal team in the last few days, as all of the pups that were born on the study beach needed to be recaptured and issued with their very own set of flipper tags, with unique numbers on, so that they can be identified if they return next year.  Everyone helped out and we spent afternoon’s puppy wrangling. It started out fairly easy as there were plenty of pups to choose from, but after a while most pups already seemed to have tags, so it was more of a challenge to find them. Seal pups can climb, as I discovered, and there were a few hairy moments trying to climb down slippery rocks carrying a humongous seal pup that is trying to gnaw holes you in, and also avoid other adult seals that want to have a go at you.  It was all good fun though! We all ended up pretty wet and dirty, but had smiles on our faces when we got home. 

Cute seal pup

Burns Night- photo by Ruth Brown

In social news we had a fun Burns night with poetry from Tamsin and Craig, haggis and very tasty veggie haggis (courtesy of Jen), and a ceilidh of sorts which ended in a few bruises for some people. We all dressed in our best Scottish outfits- some were pretty questionable (i.e. Craig’s “kilt” made of tea towels and Jerry’s beautiful red hair); however it was a great night.

Practicalities of life on Bird Island

I’ve been speaking to various people over the last few weeks and everyone seems  keen to know what it is actually like to live on Bird Island. How the food is, what we do in the evenings etc. So this blog entry is just going to be about how the base is run and what we do for a bit of fun. 

I had to put at least one picture of a bird in the post! This is a Wandering albatross that was displaying for it's mate. 

We have a cooking rota which means that I only have to cook once every nine days, which is bliss compared to home! If you are cook for the day, your first job is to do the “earlies”. This means that you have to go to the generator shed and check whichever of the two generators is running for problems, and record pressures on various gauges, temperature, and check how full the tanks are. You also have to check the boiler room, and the water tank room, as well as checking all fridges and freezers to check nothing has broken over night.

In the kitchen your jobs include making jugs of milk (using Nido- dried milk powder), baking two loaves of bread by hand (no bread maker here), cooking dinner for nine, and making sure that the kitchen is kept tidy. Everyone else has to do the washing up and put the dishes through the steriliser. On film nights you have to do a dessert, and if you are on a Saturday you have to do a three course meal. We tend to get a little bit more dressed up on Saturdays (i.e. we don’t just wear thermals). Oh and Sunday is roast day. 

The day after you have been on cook you have to do the “lates”, which is similar to the earlies but you have to make sure all the lights are off and the blinds are closed, so no birds fly into the building, as they are attracted by the light. 

Friday is “gash day”, to you and me that is cleaning day. There is a rota for this too, and jobs can include cleaning the bathrooms, living room/dining room, offices, lab, doing the laundry and checking the food stores, corridors (an easy one) or the boot room. It tends not to take too long depending on what you are allocated, but it’s certainly less than you would have to do at home.

Quite a few people have asked me what my typical day is, each day is pretty varied , but here is a general day. 

Between 8-9 Get up and have breakfast

9-10ish Data entry from the previous day and planning what work needs to be completed for the day

10:30 Hike up to Wanderer Ridge and check all of the birds there for new eggs. If any are found they have to be weighed, measured, the location recorded on GPS, adults identified and marked. Once a week we get the id’s of all of the non-breeders. Each bird has either just a metal ring with a unique number or a plastic one with larger letters that you can read from further away. Check chicks to see if they have fledged. 

12:30 Head back to base for some lunch (usually leftovers or beans on toast)

13:00 Enter data from the morning

14:30 Hike up to the other side of the island to visit the Black brow/Grey head albatross colonies. Check all nests for hatched chicks/failures. 

18:30-19:00 Arrive back at base.

19:00-20:00 Shower and change for dinner, start data entry from the afternoons work.

20:00 Dinner

21:00 Washing up

21:30 Finish data entry or depending on the day watch a film, read a book, play cards, chat on the phone. 

23:30 Bed

That is a general day at the moment, but it all depends what work is on at what time of year. 

Sunday and Wednesday night are film nights (the chef gets to pick) and Thursday night is TV dinner where we watch a TV series (at the moment we are watching “Dream Island” which is a series about Skomer island, off Wales starring our very own Jerry).

Every Monday night we have a base meeting after dinner and discuss any issues, upcoming work, or things that need to be done. 

 As you can see from the schedule there isn’t much time to get bored here, and as we do that 7 days a week (trying to keep the weekends slightly quieter) it’s a busy place. 

All of our food comes in via ship and we will be getting our next delivery of fresh food in about a month. I’ll be glad about that as we have just run out of potatoes and eggs,  and have no other fresh veg apart from onions and carrots. We’ve got around 6 freezers here packed full of food and a whole room of tinned and dried stuff. We tend to eat things that you would have at home like curry, pasta bakes, pie, stew.... normal things- just without the fresh ingredients you’d usually use. As everyone only cooks once every 9 days we tend to eat better than at home, as people go to a lot of effort. 

Other things that keep coming up..... we are on GMT here, but don’t change for the day light hours. As it is summer we have very long days and it doesn’t really get dark until about 11:30pm. The temperature is varying at the moment between about  +5 degrees and – 5 degrees. Although with the wind chill it can feel a lot colder than that sometimes. The weather here changes very rapidly, for example today it started out blowing a gale and raining and then by afternoon the wind had dropped a lot and we had some blue sky. We do have a weather forecast but it isn’t always accurate. I’ve put a screen shot of what we get so you can see that it is very different from the usual weather report in the UK. 

The weather forecast

I’ve also put up a map of the island so that you can picture where things are a bit more. 

A map of the bird colonies on the island. The base is on the south side in the bay with the two semi cicrcles (if you can see what I mean).

I can’t think of anything else at the moment, but if anyone has any questions feel free to ask!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The festive season has come to an end at Bird Island but it was a great one. Although we worked throughout the Christmas period it was still fun and we had plenty of time for celebrating. 

On Christmas eve we had to begin finding and recording all of the Wandering albatross nests across the island. We only had until New Years eve to try and cover the whole island, which is why it was such a busy festive period. On Christmas eve the rest of the team went over to the seal study beach for mince pies and mulled wine, but unfortunately I was on cook so had to stay home  (one person has to be on base at all times for safety reasons- unless we shut down the whole base which is a pain). When they got back we had spicy sausage casserole and a few drinks. 

The official Bird Island Christmas card that got sent to all the other Antarctic bases (I thought ours was the most original- most others were just pictures of penguins!)

On Christmas day I headed up to Wanderer Ridge with Craig to check the Wandering albatross for eggs. By  a massive stroke of luck the weather was absolutely gorgeous and we had a picnic of sweets at the top of the hill and looked down on base and the blue ocean.  On the way back we went to Wanderer valley (which is really close to base) and recorded all of the nests there. It was an early finish on Christmas day and I had time to finish my gingerbread houses (with the help of Craig) and to help with some of the cooking (I made the nut roast for the three veggies). 

We had an excellent Christmas dinner of turkey, ham, nut roast, Yorkshires, roast potatoes and veg. Followed by a lot of different desserts (we all went a bit nuts with the baking over the days before Christmas)- we had Christmas cake (made by Ruth and topped with a 3d male fur seal and puppy), chocolate brownies, white chocolate fudge brownies, Yule log and the gingerbread houses (we didn’t bother getting the Christmas pudding out in the end). 

Christmas day sunset from our window (taken by Craig)

After dinner we had a game of Balderdash- which was absolutely hilarious, and seemed to get more funny as the night and drinks flowed. It was a clear victory for Hannah who almost lapped some of us.....

Then we got the music on and danced to the wee hours. 

Boxing day was a bit of a write off.  We all had a lie in and John kindly made a fry up as we watched a film. I didn’t start work until about 5pm, but I only had to go to Wanderer Ridge which was nice. I don’t like being stuck on base all day. Unfortunately the weather had changed from glorious the day before to cold and windy. 

The next few days were spent between visiting the ridge and colonies E (Grey headed albatross) and J (Black-browed albatross) and going around the island recording all of the Wandering albatross nests. The Grey heads chicks started hatching in earnest, and are extremely cute grey balls of fluff, and then the Black-brow chicks followed suit. They look almost exactly the same and I can only tell the difference by what kind of bird is sitting on top of them! 

Wandering albatross making an attempt to land (they aren't very good at it, this one had about five goes)

Luckily for Jen and I the rest of the team were keen to help with finding the Wanderer nests  so we didn’t have to spend every waking hour out searching over the festive period.  

To date we have found over 650 nests but some of the birds still haven’t laid and we haven’t revisited all areas yet, so it could be up to 800 nests in total across the island. 

On New Year’s eve Jerry and I went out to cover the last couple of sections of the island for Wanderer nests and I checked colony E for Grey head chicks. The weather was the best we have had yet, we actually went out in shorts and t-shirts and walked all the way to the other end of the island without putting more clothes on! It felt really weird not to be wearing salopettes , a coat, and  hat, scarf and gloves. It felt like we were on our summer holidays or something! I think the temperature was probably only around 8 degrees but it felt roasting to us. On the way back Jerry took me to the edge of Big Mac which is the largest Macaroni penguin colony on the island. There are thousands and thousands of penguins there and they are all extremely loud. The chicks have just started hatching and we saw the little brown balls of fluff being protected by their parents. They definitely seem to like fighting- and would peck and smack with the flippers any penguin that got too close to them. It looked painful!

Big Mac Macaroni Penguin colony- this is just part of it!

When we got back it was a quick transformation into our fancy dress costumes ready for the New Year’s eve party. When we all assembled we had a cheetah, the Stig, William Wallace, Dr Strange, a puffin, Britney Spears, a chilli plant, Zorro and Captain J. It was a very varied bunch but everyone looked great. Dr Strange (Ruth) had set up a cocktail bar in the lab so we all headed over there (after eating our body weight in homemade pizza) for a few drinks. The cocktail choices were certainly very different to anything I have ever seen before- definitely Bird Island specialities. The cocktails included; placenta colada, turd toddy and stomach contents sour. I quite liked the placenta colada (I don’t think it actually contained any placenta- mainly frozen red berries). The lab looked great with glassware full of coloured liquids and real eyeballs in jars (mainly from penguins and wandering albatross). At midnight we were out on the jetty, after dodging past the seals and we set off some flares, which looked really pretty (don’t worry there are never any boats in sight of the island so we didn’t have to worry about mistaken distress signals) and had some champagne. We didn’t stay out too long as it was absolutely freezing in our fancy dress costumes. 

Dr Strange (Ruth) in her evil cocktail lab

We headed back to base and watched John and Craig do some fire poi and then a few people had a go at fire breathing (myself not included). After that we decided it was far to cold to stay outside any longer and went back in for some dancing until about 5am! 

Hannah, Ruth, Jen, me and Jon on New Years eve

New Years day didn’t consist of much other than sleep, another fry up, and three films. It was really nice to have my first day off (thanks to Jenny for doing the ridge- because she’s awesome). 

It’s now back to work and we are trying to get all the partners of the albatrosses that were on the nests that we recorded and keep checking daily for new chicks hatching at the colonies. 

The new year hasn’t really gotten to a great start- I woke up yesterday and half of my tooth fell out- just randomly! I managed to save the half but not yet sure what I’m going to do with it. We don’t have anyone here with dental experience, and after checking in the dental box we have the glue to fix it back on, but we don’t have the agitator needed to mix the glue!! Useful!! So at the moment our base commander Tamsin is consulting the medical unit back in the UK to decide what to do. The options are leave it (which might not be the best idea when I won’t be leaving here for another 14 months), make an agitator somehow and glue it back on, or it may be a trip to the Falklands to see a dentist next month.... watch this space! 

Happy New Year to all my friends and family back in the UK, and to whoever else may be reading this. It is certainly going to be a very different year to normal, being entirely spent on this little rock surrounded by the sea, but it should be a great one!