Times of Change

November has marked some noticeable changes on BI. Whilst the signs of the new breeding season were certainly here last month things have progressed even further now. Of course this month hasn’t just seen changes in the wildlife, but has also seen changes in personnel! More on that shortly, but first the wildlife.

The northern geeps have finished laying their eggs but have now been joined by the southerns. These birds actually start their season about a month later than the northerns, but they have now completed their laying period and are incubating nicely.

Laying an egg is never easy!

A 'spirit' geep - a white morph seen only in southerns - incubates overlooking the island ad South Georgia

Meanwhile the northerns have progressed themselves with the first hatchings occurring. After about a month and a half the geep chicks have started cracking through the eggs. They can stay in this ‘pipping’ stage for a couple of days but it isn’t long until they fully emerge and see the world – from under their parents’ feathers!

The adult watches over its hatching chick

It may take a couple of days, but the chicks are making their way in to the world

The chicks are nothing but big beaks on small bundles of fluff at this stage

It is not just the northerns that have been hatching either, the gentoo penguins have been hatching in large numbers this month and the squeaks of the chicks can be heard across the colonies. Last year was a bad year for the gentoos, but hopefully we have a much healthier season this year and the chicks survive through to fledging.

The adults stand guard over their chicks

Being a chick is tiring work!

The northerns and gentoos may have gotten to hatching stage but the southerns weren’t the only species to be laying in November. Shags, skuas and macs are all now laying and incubating their eggs! Chicks won’t be along until next month, but it is amazing to see all our study species now in full swing.

Macs will lay a smaller 'A' egg before laying its fertile and larger 'B' egg; this is an 'A' egg

Shag nests can have up to 3 eggs, this one is just getting started

Skuas are starting to nest as well

Whilst many of our species are all about laying eggs and hatching at the moment, there are a couple that are actually more advanced than that! The pipits have such a short incubation and chick rearing process in comparison to all other species down here that they have actually already managed to get the first fledglings away.

Pipits are quick nesters, going from eggs.....

.....to fledgling in very quick time

But it is when watching the wanals that we truly realise just how different seasons can be. These birds take almost a year to get a chick fledged from when the egg is laid, so whilst all other birds are laying, incubating and hatching the wanal chicks are just getting ready to make their first flights!

The wanal chicks are ready to fly!

The chicks may be about to leave, but this also means the return of the adults for the new breeding season. Wanals only breed once every two years due to the time it takes, so we are now getting an influx of adults that haven’t been to BI since they fledged their last chick a year ago! Hearing the wanal courtship about the island again is an extraordinary noise and we are very much enjoying having them back.

Despite this progress of the season it is hard to say that summer is here. Despite having some genuinely nice days (which for us is still only 3°C but that is tropical down here!), we have also had a lot of wind and rain and also one very big dump of snow! This snow actually buried large areas of the island but showed us just how incredible wildlife could be. Adults continued incubation despite barely having a beak above the surface and most nests survived the conditions and the subsequent melt!

Lots of snow isn't fun for geeps when they are trying to incubate!

A few were completely buried, but they kept the eggs safe nonetheless!

Of course all the impressive wildlife isn’t the only thing to change this month. We have now been joined by the new BI team! Tegan (pingu ZFA), Carrie (alby ZFA), John (seal ZFA), Jaume (senior seal scientist) and Sam (station leader) have all begun their stints on BI and have got straight in to the full swing of things, getting to know their study species’, the island and all about life in the sub-Antarctic.

Tegan starts marking her new study species

Lucy, Carrie and Tegan search for sooty nests

For the three ZFA’s in particular they are just beginning a 16 month journey that Lucy, James and I are now in the last legs of. It is great to have the new team along and impart the training required to keep the good work going. Tegan, Carrie and John are loving their roles already and will be gradually taking on the work as their own; but James, Lucy and I aren’t quite finished yet, so here is to our final 4 months of BI wonderment!

The new team, enjoying a rare sunny evening for a BBQ! (Photo courtesy of John)

October Update

October is the busiest month on BI in terms of establishing the bird work for the season. Northern giant petrels, grey-headed albatross, black-browed albatross and gentoo penguins are all at their peak of establishing nests and laying eggs whilst the macaroni penguins return, wandering albatross work continues and initial monitoring is done of blue-eyed shag, southern giant petrels, brown skuas and light-mantled sooty albatross. Then of course we mustn’t forget the returning fur seals, leopard seal sightings and elephant seal pups!

The sooties carry out synchronous flying displays as a courtship ritual, it is amazing to see them fly so close and identically to each other! Unfortunately my bird flight camera skills aren't up to much at the moment, so here is one slightly blurry sooty instead!

So in order to keep up with all this work we have been incredibly busy over the past couple of months, the daily visits to the bird colonies starting in early September, but there has been so many amazing things to see!
 

Giant Petrels

As my main study species I have spent most of my time with the geeps of late. The northern started breeding in mid-September and reach a peak of laying their eggs in the first few days of October.

To monitor their nests I have to put a stake with identifying numbered tag next to each nest, GPS its location and get the details of each bird on the nest, done via its ring number. Once both birds are confirmed for each nest, females are noticeably smaller than males, and then it is a case of checking it regularly, from a distance, to see how they progress through the season.

Laying the egg is rarely seen

The rounds of the geep study area take a minimum of 2.5 hours but when there are plenty of new eggs and partners to check then it can take up to 6 hours, and all this before other species are taken it to account! This makes field days quite relentless when they are done every day for a three month period (September, October and November) no matter what the weather. There has been plenty of wet (driving sideways rain and snow) and windy (gusts of 35-40kts) days on our little island making some field excursions particularly trying. But when the wildlife is this amazing we can’t help but love this job.

Marking the geep nests

In late October the daily work for the northern geeps stops as they finish laying their eggs and they start getting checked just once a week for survival as we eagerly await the chicks to hatch in a couple of months. But just as the northern stop, the southern start and daily checks of them begins in mid-October.

The southerns are now nesting as well

Penguins

Gentoos come ashore most in the evening

Although the geeps get the title of my main study species the penguins come in a very close second! Throughout October the gentoo penguins have a large focus as they build their nests and lay their eggs.

The first gentoo egg of the season!

There are 7 colonies of gentoo penguins on BI but my work initially focuses in just 2 of them, Johnson Cove and Square Pond. In these two colonies I have study plots of a number of nests that are checked every 2-3 days for the presence of eggs.

Large rocks make finding study nests easier!

Gentoos are very variable in their breeding season timing, unlike most birds that start at similar times each year the gentoos could lay their eggs any time between late September and Late November! Therefore, to know when we will have to check on the chicks later in the season we have to establish when 75% of nests have eggs at this time of year. From this date all following works can be calculated for optimal timing.

The gentoos are very proud of their eggs!

The gentoos started laying their eggs on the 1^st October this year, a couple of weeks earlier than the average, and reached their 75% date in the 2 main study colonies by mid-October. This meant that all 7 colonies were due to be counted in late October for number of active nests.

An Isabelline gentoo - a rare morph

Standing on the periphery of each colony in turn we spent a lot of time over the course of one weekend counting 3,800 nests! Lucy joined me for day one (Johnson Cove and Square Pond) and James for day two (the other 5 colonies) with the number of nests very even between the two days. It is great fun spending time with the gentoos, particularly as they now continue their breeding season until January when the next piece of work, counting their chicks, without regular monitoring. Let’s just hope they actually get some chicks away this year!

We had to wrap up warm during the count, standing still for a while made the cold worse (Photo courtesy of Lucy)

Whilst the gentoo work is on certain occasions through the season the macaroni work is a bit more regular, but first we had to wait for their return! The first macs were seen on the 17^th October and it is very strange seeing a large colony like Big Mac with just a handful of penguins in it! But after just a week the number of penguins had gone from a few to well over a thousand! They won’t stop there either, Big Mac will reach 40,000 before long and their noise will be heard constantly through the season.

Spot the first macs at Big Mac! Harder than a Where's Wally!

The macs are amazing little characters and our intial work is all about seeing how well they have done over winter. At Little Mac a weighbridge is set up to get weights of the birds as they arrive but at Big Mac the weights are collected manually. This means spending an afternoon at the entrance to the colony and weighing 50 male pingus (50 females are weighed in early November as the females return a bit later).

We were really excited to be working with macs again :)

Now that the macs are back I will be visiting the Little Mac colony on a weekly basis to check on the weighbridge. They were certainly a highlight of last summer and I can’t wait to spend a lot of time over the next 5 months with these characters again!

Macaroni penguins - can't help but smile every time I see them!

Mollymawks

Of course it isn’t just my study species that are kicking it to high gear at this time of year. Lucys albatrosses are also starting their season and laying their eggs. In particular the grey-heads and black-brows are filling up their colonies and laying their eggs. Lucy monitors them in much the same way I do the geeps, tag nests, check partners and use ring numbers to identify the birds.

Black-brows arrive a bit later than grey-heads, but both are laying eggs in October

At this time of year there is so much going on that we often help each other out so I have been fortunate enough to check the mollies on occasion myself. Finding the first grey-head egg of the season was a great moment and it certainly reminds us how much we have missed these striking birds over the winter!

Grey-head getting mucky building its nest

Wanderers

Unlike the geeps, mollies and pingus the wanals are actually still in the previous season! The chicks are getting very big now and fledging will start in mid/late November. Just in time for the next cohort to begin nesting in December.

They may be growing up, but they still love seeing their parents come in.... because that means food!

Work with the wanals is therefore a bit quieter in October as the main study area is checked on a weekly basis, but it is always great to have an excuse to see these awe-inspiring birds again before they take their first flights.

A wanal chick looks after my geep stake posts for me!

My, what big wings you've got!

Other birds

Whilst initial observations have been made of skua, sooties and shags the majority of work for these species’ is carried out in November to January, so there will be plenty of updates on these species as we progress through the season. Burrowing petrels, particularly white-chins,also take our attention at times through the season and I can’t wait to work with these little guys again!

Shags nesting and having their quiffs blown in the wind

Seals

So there is a lot of bird activity in October, but we are still treated to a change in the seal season as well. James is still out on a daily check for leopard seals at this time of year and whilst numbers have certainly decreased since the ice has gone and temperatures have ‘warmed’ up (it’s a balmy 0-2°C nowadays!) there are still enough sightings to keep us happy.

Haydn the lep is still a fairly regular visitor

Whilst the leps may be declining in sightings our attention has been taken by the elephant seals. BI is not a major location for ellies; compared to colonies on South Georgia itself which number in the 100’s our few dozen ellies seems like a small amount. Whilst there may not be many we have seen 11 different pups in various places across the island and seeing the huge males bellow at, chase, and even occasionally fight each other is one amazing wildlife spectacle!

A sub-adult male enjoying a scratch, the big guys aren't this cute when fighting!

A pintail stands guard over a male ellie claiming his female!

The first ellie pup of the season :)

He's ermmmm, cute?!

Leps are the winter seal species and ellies are concentrated at this time of year. But over the past couple of weeks we have started getting signs of what is to come, the return of the furries! Whilst fur seals are present in low numbers on BI through the year the breeding individuals only start to arrive in October when the big males start claiming their territories.

Male ellies chase each other with a lep, immature ellie, female ellie and furries looking on

Throughout November fur seal numbers will greatly increase and James will be kept busy with daily checks in his study colony from the 1^st November; it won’t be too long after that for us to wait until the first pups as well! But for now it is all about us getting used to the smell of the big guys outside of base again!

A big male has set up his territory under the living room window!

Bird Study Heaven

Whilst the seals have been providing plenty of entertainment recently the main focus for Lucy and I has been the start of the 2016-17 bird season. For us that means looking for signs of each species returning, mating, nesting and eventually laying their eggs!

Fieldwork began on the 1^st September but the unusually long winter down here has meant that ice and snow cover, plus the frozen ground, has interrupted the start of the season slightly. Many of the birds are a bit late in returning or breeding. Consequently Lucy and I have been able to spend more time preparing for the season finishing off important tasks like: painting quadrat markers, painting inside the field huts, getting all nest tags and marker stakes up to the study areas, checking our field equipment, preparing all the data documentation etc.

132 rocks needing a yellow makeover at Big Mac - no problem for team bird!

Luckily the birds weren’t too late and recently they have started their seasons. Our first sights of grey-head and black-browed albatross’ were on the 10^th September (actually early for the black-browed!), whilst the first grey-heads returned to one of the regular study colonies on the 16^th September. It is amazing to see and hear these pretty birds back on the island!

Return of the grey-heads :)

Pure joy! - Lucy has her grey-heads back

Meanwhile my main study species, the giant petrels, have been around in small numbers all winter but they are now coming back in full force and showing nesting and breeding behaviour.

Catching up with old friends! - I'm now spending plenty of time with my geeps

The first northern geep egg was found on the 17^th September and there will be plenty more over the coming weeks!

The first geep to lay her egg :)

The first of so, so many field notes!

Besides our main study species of albatross, petrels and penguins (for whom monitoring will soon begin in earnest as well!) there are plenty of other birds around for us to start work with. Pintails, skuas and pipits are all being closely watched whilst we are awaiting the first signs of the burrowing petrels returning. But the star of the show at the moment is the blue-eyed shag. In a quick check of one of the colonies we were very surprised to have a shag land on a nest just above our heads and place some nesting material down as it starts its season!

"Ermmmm... that didn't fill my nest much! Time to go get some more!"

Absolutely stunning birds!

With so much going on at the moment the field season is getting us all very excited! We are certainly glad to be back out in the field every day working with such amazing birds! Plus when we come back to base there are still plenty of seals around to add yet more entertainment!

"I'm bigger than you, stay away furry!"

"Oh yh?! We'll see about that ellieblob!"

Lucy and James very happy to spend an evening with a big ellie - although this guy is still small by ellie standards!

Bird Island is certainly one of the best wildlife experiences and we are all very privileged to be working here!

"Oh my god! It's a lep!" - The leopard seals are still around in good numbers, but never less than exciting to see!