Out into the Big Wide World

Firstly, BAS has developed a new virtual tour of Signy research station, which can be found on the BAS website at: https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/virtual-antarctica/virtual-antarctica-signy-demo-vr360/  The pictures for this were taken the day we arrived so there is a lot of cargo in the wrong places, but it does give the general idea of how things are.  I think it is likely to be quite good, as long as you have faster internet than we do here!  Enjoy!

The end of January sees my  Adelie chicks starting to fledge.  The adults leave too so in the space of about 10 days, the colonies go from being full of birds to strangely silent.  Here is the big colony at Gourlay at the start of the week: 

At this stage the Adelie chicks are fully feathered and have lost nearly all of their fluffy down (in this picture you can also see the younger chinstrap chicks behind):

This chick looks fat and healthy and probably weighs only slight less than its parent.  This is probably its final meal from its parents before heading out into the big wide world alone.  It will hopefully return to Signy to breed in a few years time. 

It always amazes me that the chicks somehow know the time is right to leave behind the safety of the shore and leap into the sea and swim away.  It only takes them a couple of seconds of bobbing and splashing on the surface like ducks before they realise they can dive under and vanish completely.  This is the last we see of them.  It is critical that they get this bit right as leopard seals and giant petrels cruise the shoreline, picking off any weaklings.

By the end of the week, the colony in the picture at the start of this blog was almost empty.  The birds around the edges are largely chinstraps, with just a couple of tiny clusters of adelie chicks remaining.   

My study colony has only 2 birds left in it, and the colony is now an empty space littered with numbered nest marker bricks.  All of the neat little nests of stones have turned into one big dirty mess.  One of my jobs in the coming weeks will be to clean the bricks up for next year, but I think I'll let the rain do a bit of the work for me first.

Meanwhile the chinstraps will be with us for a while yet. 

The smallest of these are still very cute.  But the majority are much bigger than this now.  They have about a month to go before they too will head for the sea.