Winter arrives...

After what feels like months of rain and wind, Signy suddenly decided to throw some different weather at us for a change.  The temperature dropped to about -6 degrees and the rain turned to snow.  We awoke one morning to the most gorgeous day, with a good three inches of fluffy, powdery snow covering everything, big blue skies and gusts of wind that made flurries of snow sparkle and form little rainbows.  Signy had changed from summer to winter overnight!  Recently, sea ice has also started blowing in again from futher South, which had been absent for a few weeks now.  All of this, plus the shortening day length has added to the feeling that winter is now well on its way.   


We were treated to some heavy and dramatic lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds over Coronation Island on this day too, which made for some dramatic photographs.  Here is Roberto is a snow flurry.


And here are some of the clouds forming over Coronation Island (you can't see the lens shape, or the way they pile up on top of eachother very well in this picture unfortunately)


Workwise, things are finally starting to calm down a little.  My chinstrap penguins have just started fledging, and in another couple of weeks every one will be gone.  I am being kept busy with chick weighing.  I have also moved all my nest marker bricks (with a little help from my obliging field assistant!) back to the work huts ready to be cleaned.  After this they will be stacked into the huts ready for putting back out into the colonies next season.  The problem I currently have is that the pond where I normally wash my bricks has just frozen over- half the bricks are now frozen into the pond, and the other half are sitting on the ice, waiting for it to melt so they fall in.  I am hoping for another week of mild weather to enable me to finish this task!

Our two Italian Scientists Roberto and Francesco are also hoping for a tiny bit more summer- they are mapping the vegetation and geomorphological features on Signy.  If it snows too much they can't see what they are trying to look at! 

Now that the nights are drawing in, it means that we don't have to stay up ridiculously late to see the sun set.  Here are some good clouds we had at sunset a few nights ago. 


Thats all for now.  Its only about 5 weeks now til the ship comes to pick us up.  Not long now til we need to start thinking about cargo to be sent out and all the things that need to be done to prepare Signy for being left alone for the winter. 

Mid February

It's already mid February and I'm trying to work out where the season has gone to!  It is now only 7 weeks til the ship comes, and we close down the station for the winter and all head off for the Falkland Islands, then onwards to the UK.  The ship visit is much later this year, in previous years we would only have had about 4 weeks left- I am glad that we get some extra time at the end of the season this year as it is normally such a rush.

The summer season is drawing to a close for the wildlife.  Already the last of the Adelie penguin chicks have gone and the colonies are empty.  Many places seem strangely quiet without them.  Here is the big Adelie colony that I've shown pictures of throughout the season, taken a few weeks ago- you can see that the chicks have wandered out of the pink nesting areas and are all over the place.  Today it is completely empty and the rain we have been having is slowly washing away all of the pink poo. 


When the above picture was taken the chicks looked about like this:


From there, it is only a week or so before they look like this, and are ready to leave.

It's suprising how quickly they change from a ball of fluff into a very smart looking little penguin!  It is always a little sad to see them go, having watched them all grow up, but this year the Adelies did very well and produced high numbers of fat healthy chicks which is great to see. 

The chinstrap penguins are still around, and their chicks are getting enormous and fat and fluffy.  Below is a picture of them earlier in the season. 


Today they are much bigger- some are already losing their down, and starting to show their adult feathers underneath.  On some, you can see the see the chin strap pattern which gives them their name, just starting to show.  They will be with us for another 4 weeks yet, before they too head for the oceans.     

With other species, the chicks are growing well too.  Here is one of the young snow petrel chicks, old enough to have been left by its parents who will be out foraging for food to feed it.  The snow petrels nest in tiny cracks in the cliffs so the chicks are well protected from the weather and predatory skuas. 

The weather this season has been very variable, and the latter part of the season has been very mild, wet and windy.  This makes working outside not much fun.  I much prefer it to be cold and snowy.  However, today is sunny which makes a nice change and I am going to head across to Gourlay to start moving my 150 numbered nest marker bricks back to the huts.  These are no longer needed now my penguins have gone, and all have to be cleaned in the pond by the hut and then left in the hut over the winter (to protect them from the winter weather) ready for next season.  With the adelies gone, my workload has eased a little, although I will be busy with fieldwork for another 3-4 weeks yet, as there are still all the giant petrel chicks to count, all the seals to count, and chinstrap chicks to weigh.  

Signy scenery

For the last couple of weeks on Signy the weather has been very mild, foggy and rainy.  This does not help with taking very good photographs!  However, here are a few of the nicer weather moments on Signy so far this season.

 
Me on a day out to the West coast to count Giant Petrel nests.


Sunset at Northpoint.


Sunset with rainbow (which I've never seen at Signy before), just behind the research station.


Sea ice at Signy.


A whale skull on Signy (with me for scale!)- remnants from when Signy used to have a whaling station. 

error...

The more observant of you may notice that there are actually no giant petrels at all in in the giant petrel picture from the previous post!  Below is the picture that I actually meant to put in.  The previous one just shows the nice green mosses and scenery of the west coast, with giant petrels flying over.     

Other wildlife

Contrary to popular belief, penguin counting is not my only role at Signy- I work with other species as well...

Snow petrels have to be one of my favourite birds of all.  These beautiful delicate little birds nest in cracks in the cliffs just behind the base and fly around in the evenings when there is less chance of being knocked out of the air and devoured by the skuas.  As my bedroom is at the end of the building, I can usually hear them calling to eachother through my bedroom wall at night.  A previous scientist attached tiny little tracking devices to these birds to see where they go to, and part of my work is to go round all of the nests to check for trackers, and retrieve any devices I can find.
 
Nesting snow petrel.

Blue-eyed shags also nest at Signy.  Like the penguins, I count the nests and chicks each year to see how they are doing in the long term.  As with the snow petrels, some of the birds had tracking devices attached last summer, this time to see how deep they are diving.  My role is to retrieve the devices this year.  The devices are tiny, and attached to small plastic leg rings, which are visible from quite a distance, making it easy to work out which ones to catch.  Unlike penguins, shags have the ability to fly and therefore are much harder to catch! 
 

Blue-eyed shags nesting.

Every 5 years a whole island Giant petrel survey is carried out to see how the population is doing.  These are large birds, that many people would consider ugly, but I am very fond of them, having worked closely with them during my time at Bird Island.  The giant petrel survey is good fun as it involves walking the entire Western side of the island, and visiting places that I don't usually get to visit.  The weather was gorgeous the day we did the survey- I think we overestimated how many clothes we needed to wear and underestimated the amount of sunscreen!
 

Giant petrels nesting in the boulders on the West coast.

As the season progresses, Signy gets increasingly large numbers of fur seals.  These are mainly young males and they can make moving around the island rather tricky as they are very agile and keen to bite.  Once a season, every seal on the island is counted.  This is no mean feat and requires everyone on the island to count separate areas, and takes at least two days.  Usually we count between 15 and 20 thousand fur seals, plus several hundred elephant seals, and a handful of leopard seals and weddell seals.
 
Fur seals that have to be negotiated every couple of days on my route to Gourlay.

Two days ago, we had another ship visit, the Protector, a British Naval ship.  Its visit was a very speedy affair compared to the Shackleton a couple of weeks ago, and the ship arrived and was gone again in 20 minutes.  The Protector dropped off three new scientists, bringing our numbers back up to 8 people on station.  They will now be with us til the end of the season.