During Lucy’s holiday (before starting a second winter and third summer on BI!) I am continuing the albatross work for her. Getting this opportunity to work in
another role, as the Albatross Zoological Field Assistant, has been a great
opportunity and I am very much enjoying the experience.
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| Black-brow dinnertime - nature in action! |
Throughout April and May the majority of
work with the mollies is checking their fledging times. The black-brows are big enough to
leave the nests from mid-April onwards whilst the grey-heads begin to reach
that stage a few weeks later. After seeing them hatch earlier in the season it is always
great to see the chicks make their first leap into the world outside the
colony; although the empty colonies left behind are now very lonely places!
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| Colony J, a black-brow colony, is getting sparser by the day |
To get as accurate as possible when estimating fledging
times some of the colonies are visited every other day, which means a lot of
walking through deep snow and tussock. This makes getting to the colonies a bit
slower than usual but it can also be a lot more fun, especially when going
downhill to a colony!
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| The view from top of colony J over snow covered tussock and bogs |
My favourite colony has to be colony B. This is where a
grey-head colony has nested with just a few black-brows thrown in for good
measure. I do slightly prefer grey-heads compared to
black-brows as they look that bit nicer and are generally less aggressive when in the colonies.
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| OK, so I might've picked slightly biased photos, but the grey-heads are much nicer! |
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| A grey-head chick in the snow |
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| A grey-head chick just after a snow flurry looking very unimpressed! |
Colony B also serves a great reminder of my usual
role as Penguin and Petrel ZFA. There is a great view over to the macaroni colony at Big Mac (although
its current emptiness makes it quite lonely and very quiet until October!) and there
are also Antarctic prions nesting under the hut (although they have now fledged as well!).
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| An empty and snow covered Big Mac |
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| A prion chick, back when it was fluffy! |
One extra piece of work at this time of year is to go to
some other mollie colonies and count the number of chicks present just before
fledging begins. By doing this at the end of the season we can get an estimate
of productivity for more colonies than just our regular study ones.
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| Jerry taking a moment for some photos during the grey-head census... mid snow storm |
Of course, as we are checking many colonies, some of them very regularly, at this time of year we are witnessing some of the chicks preparing for the world ahead of them.
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| Time to stretch those wings! |
But it is not just the two species I have in the albatross work. There is the continuing survey of the light-mantled sooty albatross. Unfortunately, like many of our species, the sooties have had a bad year and in our study area there is
just one chick left! But it is braving the winter weather and will hopefully
make it to fledging.
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| A sooty chick pre-snow blizzards, he was too sensible and stayed hunkered down (out of camera range) in the snow! |
Of course, I can’t look after the albatross' for Lucy without
spending plenty of
time with the wanals. These are our only resident bird to be
raising chicks through the winter. The nests are built up from the ground in
order to keep the chicks raised above the snow and ice layer through the season
and the chicks will get progressively bigger. So there will be plenty of
updates on their progress through the year!
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| Footprints in the snow |
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| The whole family chilling out |
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| The chicks are on their own most of the time now, but they seem to enjoy themselves |
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| The new definition of cute! |
