Albatross ZFA

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.

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!

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!

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.

OK, so I might've picked slightly biased photos, but the grey-heads are much nicer!

A grey-head chick in the snow

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!).

An empty and snow covered Big Mac

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.

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.

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.

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!

Footprints in the snow

The whole family chilling out

The chicks are on their own most of the time now, but they seem to enjoy themselves

The new definition of cute!