Winter Pictures

Home on a snowy morning.

Gentoo penguin in the snow.

Adult male Antarctic fur seal guarding the snow covered beach.

The base from North Valley.

Wandering albatross chick in the evening sunshine.

Nearly Midwinter

Again its been a month since I last wrote- I’m not going to bother apologising for not updating this regularly from now on, because I do exactly the same thing every month and still never get round to doing anything about it!

Somehow time has continued to pass at an alarming rate. Yesterday was the interview date for the two people taking over the seal and albatross field assistant positions for the next 2.5 year stints. Like me last year, they will do 3 months training in Cambridge from September, then come down to Bird Island in November for 3 summers and 2 winters. It’s frightening to think that this time next year it will be my job that is being advertised and I will be enjoying my second and final winter before my replacement arrives next November for their summer of training. It’s even more frightening to think that it’s been a full year since I was sitting in the office on Oronsay, being told on the phone that I had got the penguin field assistant job. By staggering the year of recruitment for the three field assistants, it means that there is always someone one base who has done the previous field season and the previous winter, and saves recruiting 3 new people one season and none the next.

It’s been a relatively relaxed month. With the last of my giant petrel chicks fledging last week, most of my fieldwork is now complete for this season. I am still taking Gentoo diet samples with Jose for his winter work so I still have the excuse to go out and about. There have been excuses for using the medical training I was given back in Cambridge, in both administering injections and doing a filling on one of Ewan’s teeth which have been good fun. I’ve also spent a lot of time in the lab, dissecting the pellets collected weekly over the summer from the Blue-eyed shags that nest on the cliffs. The shags regurgitate all the fish bones and otoliths (ear bones) and squid beaks and by collecting the pellets and dissecting them, these can be removed. Later, when I get round to it, I can use these to identify the squid and fish species that the birds have been eating.

This weekend is mid-winter. For us, this is the equivalent of Christmas. As Christmas falls mid-breeding season for us, celebrations tend to be a bit limited as we are all very busy. So we celebrate mid winter instead. We have already started receiving midwinter greetings photographs from other Antarctic bases of different nationalities around the world which is always nice to get. For us, this is a turning point in the year, the point when daylight starts to lengthen again. As no one is very busy, we have a full week off work and of celebrations, which will start on Sunday. Everyone is busy making a present for one other person on base to be presented on mid winters day (we picked names out of a hat a few weeks ago and are all secretly working away in various parts of the building). We are all looking forward to our week of fun.

We had a lovely couple of weeks of cold settled weather, where all the streams froze solid, and we had lots of snow. It was great to see the seals playing in it, pushing their noses into it and scampering across the beach to get enough momentum to slide on their bellies. Sadly a lot of it thawed when temperatures warmed to just above zero for a few days, but there will be much more to come.

Anyway, that’s enough for now, I’ve only got 2 days to go til midwinter and I still have some work to do on my midwinter present.

A few more pictures....

Funny snow balls formed by the wind in Prion pond below Tonk.

Southern Giant petrel chick practicing learning to fly (South Georgia behind).

Bird Sound and South Georgia in the snow from the top of La Roche.

A wintery day on Bird Island- Jose and Ewan at the top of La Roche.

A few winter pictures...

The view from the kitchen window on a wintery day.

Antarctic fur seal, La Roche (highest point on the island) and our base, looking across to South Georgia in the background.

Wandering albatross chick on the meadows in the snow.

The 4 winterers (excluding Jose as he'd only just arrived on the ship) go out for lunch on the JCR at last call (Me, Derren, Ewan and Dave).

Last call and the start of winter

Yet again I’ve got left behind with my blog- so much for the good intentions of writing each week! Another month has somehow passed, bringing my total to 5 months on Bird Island. Those 5 months spanned the main breeding season for most of the wildlife on the island, and I spent much of my time counting/weighing/measuring/monitoring my penguins and giant petrels, watching the season progressing and my young birds rapidly growing. The middle of April saw the beginning of the end. The last of the Northern giant petrel chicks fledged and we ringed the Southern giant petrels in preparation for them leaving in a few weeks time. The Macaroni penguins that had all returned to the colonies to moult started to leave in vast numbers. They will not return until next year. The young seal pups that have been playing on the beach ever since I arrived finally took to the sea leaving only a handful of the smallest ones left. The young grey-headed and black-browed albatrosses can also be seen perched on the edges of their nests, practicing flapping their wings in preparation for that perfect gust of wind that will see them launch into the air and fly away, not returning to the island until they are old enough to think about breeding themselves. The breeding season is nearly over. Only the wanderer chicks are still small- they will remain in their nests throughout the winter, not fledging until Christmas time.

The end of the season was also felt on base. On 13th April, the JCR called for the last time this season. It delivered a final instalment of fresh fruit and veg, a large load of frozen food (meat, frozen veg, butter, cheese etc), the mail bag, and Jose (a scientist who will be spending the winter with us studying penguins and albatrosses and their foraging behaviour and diet). The wintering staff were lucky enough to be taken onto the ship for lunch- it made a nice change to “go out”, and it was nice to see our little island from offshore instead of being on it. The ship took away all of our empty fuel drums and waste from the season. Most significantly, the leaving of the ship heralded the official start of winter as it also took away all of out summer scientists. This included Fabrice who I have been working with all summer and who has now handed over his job to me at the end of his 2.5 year stint here. The other summer staff also left, leaving just 5 of us for the winter. We do not expect another ship call now until November.

The departing of the ship and some very close friends and work colleagues left the 5 of us rather lost, rattling around in the suddenly very large and very empty base. We drowned our sorrows with lots of cake and the first official filling of the hot tub, where we spent a pleasant couple of hours, sitting in the warm water with snow falling around our shoulders. The next day, there were chunks of ice washing up on the beach and everywhere was covered with snow.

Since then, we’ve had periods of snow and ice, interspersed with warmer periods where everything starts to melt again. My fieldwork is much reduced- I now only have Southern giant petrels to monitor, but I’m also helping Jose with work on his Gentoo penguins and there is still plenty of opportunity for albatross work. My winter work will mainly consist of writing up the reports from the summer, and lab work, analysing the krill and otoliths collected from the penguin diet samples over the summer. Its nice to know there is time to play in the snow after our hectic summer. I am looking forward to learning to ski and snowboard!