Settling in to the season

The ship left us just over two weeks ago and the team here have settled down into their work routines, making the most of the calm weather.  These footprints are the evidence of my regular commute to work. 

A large chunk of the work I do is part of a long term monitoring programme, where the same data set is collected year after year to reveal the long term trends in the wildlife numbers and breeding success.  My role is to follow the wildlife through their breeding season, using methods such as counting, measuring and weighing, to add this year’s data to the long-term dataset.  The penguin datasets in their current form now span more than 30 years, with a number of the studies dating as far back as the 1950s.

 For me, the first job of the season is to set up my small intensively monitored penguin study plots at Gourlay, a low peninsula, 2 miles away.  I hike to these colonies every second day so I can keep a close eye on the timing of the breeding season.  The timing of the laying/hatching of my study birds at these colonies, tells me when to get out around the rest of the island to do the larger scale counts there, so the long term data sets are comparable over the years.  For example, the egg counts are done when a certain percentage of my study birds have at least one egg, so if the study birds are having an early season the large scale counts can be done earlier too and the data is still comparable.  This keeps the counts standard across all years.

 This is my chinstrap colony...

And my Adelie colony...

To identify my nests at Gourlay, I mark out 100 nests of each species with a numbered brick.  Anything smaller than this does not work as the penguins move things around and pinch each other’s nesting materials and pebbles.  These are the bricks before the colony has been set up.

The large scale colony counts include an egg count, a chick count, and later a fledgling count.  As  the Adelie penguins had already been incubating eggs for quite a while by the time we arrived at Signy, it was time to get to Northpoint to do the Adelie and gentoo egg counts as soon as we could.  This involved a trip across the island to North Point.  On the first trip of the season, this involves checking a safe route up and over the icecap and marking it with flags.  We picked a beautiful day for this, one where the skies were blue and the weather calm.  On a day like this, few places are quite as beautiful.

With the icecap declared safe (no crevasses on the flagged route), we were free to head for Northpoint for the counts.  As it takes several hours to hike over the icecap and along to Northpoint, we hiked over one day, spent the night at Foca field hut and returned back to the research station the following day.  Foca is a lovely little hut, heated by a reflex stove and we enjoyed a cosy night after a long day in the field. 

As well as penguins, Northpoint also has breeding southern giant petrels which are always nice to see. These birds can be grey or white and the white ones look particularly nice in the snow.  

All of the breeding gentoo penguins on the island are at Northpoint- again, another nice treat.

Back on station we have been keeping our skills current, doing some Search and Rescue and first aid training.  I've also made a couple of very large Christmas cakes and some mince pies, and yesterday the Christmas tree went up.