Monday, 29 February 2016

A Leopard Amongst Us

Back towards the start of this blog I gave some basic information on all the main species we will be studying in our roles on island. Of all those species only the leopard seal has yet to feature so far as they are a winter sighting..... usually! But back on the 19th February we were treated to our first lep of the year!
Enjoying the sunshine (sun being almost as rare as a lep at the moment!)
Taking in the surroundings and looking very prehistoric
"My what big teeth you have!"
The fur seals are small in comparison, and this lep wasn't a big one for the species either
The first lep of the season draws in the local crowd
It is going to be great seeing these guys around more during winter!

Friday, 26 February 2016

A Special Place!

Whilst Bird Island is an absolutely amazing place to work for the people, wildlife and scenery sometimes there is so much work to do that it is important to take a step back and just enjoy what is around us. In mid-February I was able to do just that and spend a few hours simply enjoying watching the wildlife. I had planned to watch the macs entering Big Mac only, but I saw so much more. Here is a picture gallery of that afternoon....
I had come to watch the parade of macs entering the colony, the view certainly never disappoints!
But on a calm afternoon it was also possible to get close to the water and watch the macs swimming
They were getting ready to enter the colony and watching them jump out of the water is spectacular
But it wasn't just macs we saw - spot the chinstrap!
Just to make it easier, here is one of 8 chinstraps found at the bottom of Big Mac, a high turnout for this species here!
Not to be out-done by its close relatives a gentoo also came ashore near the chinstraps
King penguins completed the set of all 4 species in one place - what must the macs think to all these other penguins!
Snowy sheathbills are a common sight in mac colonies, pecking at small bits of food
But when the food is bigger the larger birds come to eat!
Geeps and skuas fight over a recently dead penguin
Back to the more peaceful views before leaving Big Mac
Not content with supplying so much at Big Mac, Bird Island also provided displaying wanals on my way home
Lying back in the tussock and watching them fly overhead is an incredible sight!
Getting in to the evening and many wanals land to begin displaying rituals
It certainly looks like the wanals are smiling, and I was too!

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

The Extended Pantheon

Living on Bird Island, as its name suggests, is always full of wildlife. But it isn’t just the giant petrels, penguins and albatross that make up our birdy heaven. There are plenty of other species around to keep us busy and entertained and here is a bit of information on just a few of them.

First up there are the shags. I have mentioned this elegant species before but unfortunately this update is not particularly nice as it appears that the breeding season has failed for many of them. We can’t say why this might be as yet, the studies are ongoing, but hopefully, much like the gentoos, they will bounce back from a poor year with a more successful one next summer.
The shag colony hasn't bred so well but they will try again next year
In winter I will actually be surveying the snowy sheathbills and South Georgia pintails a couple of times a month for population levels. But for now they are just getting on with their breeding season in the background of the larger birds. So to bring them into the spotlight a bit more here are some details on sheathbills and pintails – collectively called ‘duckbills’.

The sheathbills are regularly seen around base as they peck at carrion and faeces to find food but seeing their nests isn’t so easy. By making nests out of tussock under rock overhangs finding a nest is a challenge, and even though the chicks could be deemed more ‘ugly’ than other chick species’ I think they are worth it when a nest is found.
Finding nests can be difficult, but seeing a small sheathbill chick being protected by its parent (top) and a large sheathbill chick near to fledging (bottom) are great sights
The pintails are even more elusive when nesting. I did find a nest of 3 eggs in the tussock during a geep survey (the only nest of eggs found for a number of years on island!) but unfortunately was not able to get a picture. The adults themselves are a bit more timid and it can take a while of patient sitting to be able to let them come close to you for some better photos.
Pintails are cool little ducks when you see them close-up
What is really challenging with pintails though is getting a glimpse of the ducklings. They speed through the channels between clumps of tussock so quickly that all you get is a fleeting blur. They are so quick when first encountered our initial thoughts are ‘was that a rat?!’ (thankfully not though, Bird Island is in fact rat free and we monitor the situation to keep it that way). The very elusive nature of ducklings makes being able to photograph them in the open a very rare event indeed, so when Al and I came across one on a pond with its parent that didn’t dash away we didn’t waste time in getting a photo!
Brilliant to see a duckling going for a swim
Shags, sheathbills and pintails all get a small amount of monitoring in my role on island, but a couple of other species have no work done with them at all. South Georgia pipits are a common sight on island as they can be seen in tussock and in streams looking for small morsels to eat. It is brilliant to have a resident passerine, the most southerly breeding passerine in the world, and their song is a pleasant background tune to our time on island.
A pipit perched on some tussock
Another species we have is the kelp gull. Gulls (remember they are gulls – there is no such thing as a seagull) were one of my favourite groups of seabirds to work with back in the UK and although there is no surveying of them done here it is a nice reminder of gulls in general when a kelp gull comes onto the beach outside base. It is even better when we manage to find another rarer sighting on island, a kelp gull chick.
A kelp gull family, two adults with a fledgling chick
There are yet more species living on the island, many of them are burrow nesting petrels that are generally nocturnal so seeing them is difficult and photographing them is even harder. But hopefully I will get the occasional lucky sighting, much like with the storm petrel, to show in future blogs!

It is not just birds we have on island though, the seal work revolves mostly around fur seals in the summer and leopard seals in the winter but there is another species regularly on island. The elephant seals are giant creatures that are always funny to watch belly-flopping up the beaches.
An ellie staring down the camera
With all these species to see life in the field never has a dull moment and I can’t wait to see what surprises the wildlife has to offer during the rest of my stay here!

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Penguin Time!

So I have written about all sorts so far – geeps, skuas, wanals and mollies, brief interludes with seals and white-chins, and even why we are all blonde! But given my job title there has been something distinctly lacking and it is time to put that right.... so here come the penguins!

First up we unfortunately have to get through some bad news. This year has been a disastrous year for our gentoo colonies with no breeding attempts being successful! The cause of this is being investigated but luckily I did get to see some hatch before they failed; however, this actually made the feeling of their bad time worse.
Gentoos on nest; a hatching; gentoo chick
But this is not a first time thing for the gentoos. Poor breeding years have happened in the past but the adult population survives to try again in better conditions the next year. So fingers crossed I bring you news of a good gentoo season next summer! However, not all penguin news is bad news; the macs are doing just fine!
Macaroni penguins
We have a number of different workstreams around the penguin colonies, all designed to better understand the population. Our work focuses in two colonies on the west side of BI; Little Mac and Big Mac.
Little Mac and Fairy Point Hut with a view of Big Mac in the background
Big Mac is absolutely awe-inspiring! To be amongst 80,000 penguins is an incredible experience, even if the weather on BI is so changeable that one minute we are counting in clear, but still cold, weather and the next a snow flurry is obscuring our view!
Changeable weather for counting macs - 10 minutes separates these photos!
Obviously counting so many penguins regularly would be impossible. As such we have transects through the colony that remain constant every year – marked by yellow stones – that are counted so that we can study any changes in the population. The transects are counted once during incubation and again when the chicks are hatching.
Incubating an egg and caring for a chick
Little Mac however is small enough that the entire colony is counted on the same days as the Big Mac transects. Whilst it is smaller it is actually much harder to count! Just a mass of penguins with no discernible boundaries within the colony makes accurately counting every penguin on a nest quite difficult.
Anyone fancy counting? Remember to only count those on a nest! :)
Even though counting them can be challenging at times it is impossible not to enjoy the work because being in the colonies of such funky little birds is absolutely magnificent!
Can't get enough of these cool little penguins
Their feathers are so thick and waterproof that the snow just sticks to the edge of them
Directing the traffic through the colony!
By mid-January the chicks are already growing rapidly. They are being left on their own at times and are even starting to form small crèches to keep warm. 
The chicks are growing well
Then by mid-February the chicks are really big, whilst at the same time immature birds are arriving at the colony to moult.
A moulting mac gives a chick a little hug on its way through the colony
The views that the chicks get across Big Mac are very impressive when the sun is out and it is always amazing to see them developing and beginning to grow their own feathers.
The views the chicks get when growing up are absolutely stunning!
Whilst the views at Big Mac are impressive it is at Little Mac where our work with the chicks takes place as we count how many have survived to fledging age in mid-February.
Counting all the chicks moving around the colony is a challenge
The chicks begin to look quite funny whilst moulting, not long until this dude is ready to fledge!
Soon the chicks will fully fledge and when they do the adults will go as well to feed. The adults will return after a month to moult and then leave a month later again to spend the winter away feeding, getting ready for their return for the next breeding season to begin in October.

Whilst the gentoos have had a bad year and the macs are doing well I should also mention a third penguin species. Whilst they don’t breed on BI we do get decent numbers of king penguins passing through from South Georgia. Some of these penguins are here just to rest whilst others are moulting, but either way it is always great to see some royalty around!
King penguins, looking either regal or scruffy depending on moult
Finally, there is also a fourth species to drop by Bird Island. Again only on passing through do we see this species and it is a much rarer sighting than the kings, coming ashore on occasion and normally just a single individual. But we do get a few chances each year to see a chinstrap penguin up close, a great opportunity as we haven't seen them since travelling down south on the JCR.

Chinstrap penguin visiting Bird Island and saying hello to its close relation, the gentoo
With only 17 species of penguins across the southern hemisphere (and therefore in the whole world) it is spectacular to be living in a location where I can see 4 of them in one day!
What a handsome penguin!