A Ferocious Predator

When we had the southern right whale so close in to the island just a couple of nights ago I thought that would be the pinnacle of wildlife sights for some time to come. But just a couple of days later and we witnessed something very different but equally exciting - a leopard seal tearing apart its fur seal prey!

"My, what big teeth you have!"

The leps, which we have come to call leprasaurus' (for no apparent reason!), thrash their prey about in order to rip chunks off to eat. When it is the first time I have seen such a kill (after missing a few earlier in the season) and it is just 10 metres in front of us it certainly rivals the whale for a pre-dinner spectacle!

Mmmmmm.... I wonder if someone has got a photo!?

The lep holding its prey in the water

The kelp got in the way at times

A very powerful performance!

Evening with a Whale!

Before coming south I had never seen whales before and a sighting of humpbacks from the ship totally smashed that with some amazing views. But since then sightings have been much rarer and more like you would expect, stood on a high point of Bird Island with just distant views of a whale or two poking above the water. I never thought I would get a better view of any whales than I did of the humpbacks from the ship and I certainly never expected to see any so close again whilst on land!...

....until last night that was! Whilst getting dinner ready I heard a call on the radio from James, he had seen a whale just offshore. Jerry, Ian and I all rushed out and got to the rocks at the mouth of the bay just outside base. We certainly weren't disappointed! There in front of us, at times as little as 15-20 metres away was a stunning sight - a Southern Right Whale feeding!!! This little island gets more amazing every day!

As close to a whale as I am ever likely to get on land!

The usual view is just of a back

But we got some amazing views of its head as well!

Absolutely stunning!!

A Week in Winter

Now that the molly chicks have fledged and sweeps for dead chicks completed for each colony the amount of wildlife I have to monitor has greatly reduced. In fact most of the geeps have fledged as well with just one final southern chick yet to go.

Dead chick sweeps allow us to find any chicks that didn't make it so that we get an accurate count of productivity. Driving wind and ice on the ground makes it difficult and quite laborious though! (Photo courtesy of Jerry).

The last chick of my field season!!

But despite the lack of mollies and geeps to keep me entertained there are still plenty of things to be getting on with for work. Most of it is office or lab based work but there are some species still around that need surveying through winter. So here is what happens in a typical week for winter on BI.

Monday

On Monday I completed the geep work for the year by typing the final results into our databases. Whilst there is still one chick left I could upload all the data and just adjust for the final chick when it does fledge. Our online databases link directly back to BAS Cambridge where our managers can review the years’ data.

A database, a graph and a spreadsheet open at once - yep, I am a scientist! :)

Of course it is difficult to stay inside all day, even when we are firmly in the grip of winter, as there is so much wildlife still around. So I spent a short time in the afternoon just out in front of base with some kelp gulls and Antarctic terns feeding amongst the kelp.

Kelp gulls, adults and fledglings

Getting photos of these quick flyers is not easy! Especially when they are fishing in a snow flurry.

Tuesday

In just a few weeks time we will be celebrating midwinter down south. This is a big celebration each year, partly because we are generally too busy around Christmas to get the full holiday spirit going (although Christmas was a lot of fun!) and partly because there are a few events that bring all bases on the continent together at this time – more on all that in blogs around midwinter. But what we do also have is a Secret Santa type arrangement where we all make a gift for someone else on base to open at midwinter. This is a great reason to fully utilise our workshop and get busy with some woodcraft!

Jerry and I working away on our projects (photo courtesy of Ian).

After putting some final touches to my midwinter gift it was time to get in to the lab and begin some identification work. The krill, squid beaks and otoliths (fish ear bones) collected from macaroni penguin and geep diet samples through the summer now have to be measured to identify sex, life stage (krill only) and species (squid and fish). By doing a few hours a day a few days a week the lab work is completed in plenty of time for the final season reports (in August) without us getting stuck in there for too long at any one time – staring through a microscope at tiny bones gets a bit draining!

Jerry very kindly came in to help me get started on the lab work; measuring krill this time.

Wednesday

The wandering albatross raise their chicks all through winter and as such we are never fully deserted of wildlife to monitor. The first of each month, until September, marks an all island wanal census where we go out and check that each nest is still active, recording those that have failed in the preceding month. The chicks are now getting noticeably bigger and filling up their nests very nicely!

Wanals chicks are amazing (even the grumpy one in the bottom right!).

I covered an area on the east side of BI with the furthest wanal chick being all the way on the point of Farewell Point, the eastern extreme of the island. This is an area we get to rarely as there is little survey work on this part of the island, so it is always amazing to be able to get out and see a different location occasionally.

During the census Ian actually confirmed the final geep chick to have now fledged! Goodbye geepsy chicks, good luck! Now it is a case of waiting until September for the breeding season to start anew.

Thursday

Now that there are just 4 people on base the cooking rotation comes around quicker than before. Thursday was my shift this week and whilst we are obviously lacking in the fresh food department we are certainly not restricted when it comes to frozen or dried foods.

We have excellent supplies of frozen and tinned veg and fruit, dried pulses and herbs, juice, baking supplies (we make our own bread as well), cereals, sauces, milk (powdered), tea and coffee and much more  - but more importantly there is plenty of chocolate, cheese and bacon :)

The cooking rota can sometimes be a bit of a pain, but that is when simple meals like baked potatoes and pasta pesto come in handy. Other times it is a great opportunity to experiment and try something different as during winter we generally have a bit more time to prepare. The quality of food served on BI has been very high and much more varied than I expected to be possible before coming south.

During summer every meal was eaten at the table. But during winter we have weekend meals at the table but during the week we switch to TV dinners, often followed up by a bit of Mario Kart or Super Mario Bros. on the Wii.

Friday

Friday is our scrubout day. The base is divided into sections; boot room and toilets, kitchen and foodstores, living room and offices, lab and waste management. We rotate through these jobs each taking a different area each Friday and giving it a good clean. The base well kept and these regular scrubbings make sure it stays that way.

A photo of a mop would be boring (although I did clean, honest!), instead here is a skua :)

Besides all the work done during the week and the ways we relax in the evening there are times during winter when it is quiet enough to have a bit of a slow afternoon. When this happens it can be filled with any amount of hobbies. There are puzzles and craft books on base, a whole bookcase full of novels to read, the workshop is always available for projects to be done and of course there is whatever we brought down ourselves to keep us entertained. So I spent Friday afternoon reading James Herriot and colouring in some Zygons! Not a bad way to relax!

Doctor Who is amazing and colouring isn't just for primary school :) keeping in the lines is still difficult though!

Saturday

Saturday is a day we always make sure to put a bit extra effort in to doing something as a group. This is particularly helpful during the summer when we are all so busy with fieldwork that we may not spend that much time with other people. But the tradition continues through winter with Saturday being a three-course meal and can be a themed night (although not always).

Clockwise from top left: wig night from back in the summer, Nintendo night, League of Distinguished Gentlemen and Star Wars (Photos courtesy of Al, Jerry and Ian).

We usually follow up the meal with a game of some sort, sometimes this is cards or a board game, other times it can be a pub quiz, dance night or some other game we have designed and built for the station. From cornhole to murder mystery, lightsaber battles to monopoly, stargazing to rummy we have done quite a few different things over the previous weeks and months; and this week James was on Saturday cook and set up a great meal and some fun card games.

Sunday

Once a fortnight there is another survey to keep me outside with the wildlife, the pintail and sheathbill count. This is conducted along a stretch of coastline either side of base and usually takes about two hours, walking along the coast and counting every sheathbill and pintail along the way.

Ian counting some ducks

This gives us an indication of wintering populations for comparison to work ongoing at King Edward Point and the work they are doing there after the rat eradication project (Bird Island was already rat free and so can be a control location).

When it has been snowing quite a lot then the tussock gets hidden under a blanket of white. This makes it a lot of fun walking around between places, crunching in the snow or sliding down slopes. Of course we are always in danger of not seeing a gap below the snow and falling through the tussock!

We get used to falling knee or even waist deep in snow, but shoulder deep was an interesting one!

The pintail route along the coast is the same as the leopard seal route, so whilst counting ducks and sheathbills we also keep an eye out for leps. These guys are absolutely massive, the largest getting up to 3.5 metres (males) to 4 metres (females) long! It is great seeing such a well developed predator up close.

The sheathbill says: "Oi! Count me not the lep!"

After work it is always nice to relax and every Wednesday and Sunday are film nights. We are lucky enough to have a projector hooked up to our TV on station and so have our own mini-cinema for these occasions. Whoever is on cook gets the film choice that day so everyone gets a fair share of picking the film, this week it was Ian’s choice and we watched The World's Fastest Indian which is a great film!

Not a bad way to finish the week :)

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!

Winter is...... here!

It has been about two months since I have updated this blog so it is time to catch up!

The reason for the big delay between posts has been how busy the work has been in this time. In early April we had Last Call when the RRS Ernest Shackleton dropped off our last bits of cargo and food for the 7 month winter ahead whilst also taking Al and Siân back home, it was amazing to work with you both and you are greatly missed on the island! Of course, not only did we have to prepare for the Shack but I also had to prepare for taking on the albatross ZFA role as well. As previously mentioned Lucy is staying on here for a second winter which means going on a well-earned holiday for a time first, so Lucy has trained me in her role to cover the workload for April and May.... but there will be more on that in the next blog!

So what has happened in the past two months? Well the main change has been winter has come (but thankfully no white-walkers are yet to terrorize our shores)!

No white-walkers but plenty of gentoos around in the snow

The changing seasons has made a big difference to the species we see around as the northern geeps have now all fledged and the macaroni penguins have all left the island until they come back in October. The southern giant petrels are about to fledge as well whilst the mollies will also be gone by the end of May.

With no macaronis left it was time to dismantle the weighbridge for the winter (Photo courtesy of Jerry)

But that doesn’t mean we are deserted for the winter, far from it! In this season numbers of other birds greatly increases. Pipits and pintails are pushed out of the islands interior, where ponds freeze and tussock gets covered in snow, down into the bays where they can forage in the shallows or strand line.

Pipits are more common on the rocky shorelines now

Pintails are actually one of two species, alongside sheathbills, that I will be counting twice a month from May to August. But when you get over 200 of them in one go it is worth counting them a few weeks early!

211 pintails in one location!

Gulls and shags can still be seen around the coast in good numbers as well but the greatest difference is in the smaller petrels. Cape petrels have made their way in to our bays in large numbers to feed on small critters in the seaweed and we are occasionally treated to a glimpse of storm-petrels as well!

Cape petrels rivaling the pintails for numbers, 170 is the biggest count in one location so far!

Flying past a cape petrel, I got quick glimpses of a stormie!

Not only has the bird world changed but so has the mammal world. Winter marks the arrival of leopard seals. Whilst we had an unseasonal visitor back in February it is May to October when these massive creatures normally come ashore. That being said, they have arrived early and we have already had over 15 sightings in April alone!

A leopard seal, called 'Jumpy Jim', enjoying a snooze

Cute but a fearsome predator

James using sticks lined up with head and tail to measure 'Max'

But whilst all the wildlife has been great to watch in transition when talking about the arrival of winter on a sub-Antarctic island there is only one element of change that gets the prize for most dramatic – snow/ice!

Went for a quick session photographing a lep next to base and get hit by the snow! (Photo courtesy of James)

Not long after Last Call in early April we got the first flurries of snow. This was followed by a day when the wind gusts topped 50 knots and the base was literally shaking around us (it’s built to withstand that though, so it’s normal in bad weather!). Waking up after a night when the 50 knot winds were dying down was an interesting sight for us all..... ice! And lots of it!

Ice filling the bay and altering the coastline

Not only had ice been blown in to the bay outside base but it had arrived in such large quantities that it covered the shoreline quite spectacularly and pretty much drowned our jetty from view. There was so much in fact that much of it is still here two weeks later.

Jerry looking out over the ice

After all the ice came in we had regular snow falls which has now left the island covered in snow ranging from 2 inches thick to waist deep depending on the topography of where we are. This had made traversing the island to complete our ongoing fieldwork more of a challenge, chains on our boots help combat the slippery ice, but when walking across tussock or part-frozen bogs it is near impossible to see where the big gaps or weak spots are. This has resulted in numerous falls for us all and occasional wet feet as we go through the ice layer up to our knees, or even our waists on occasion!

But despite the difficulties it poses having the whole island covered in snow is absolutely breathtaking and at least makes going downhill much more fun and a lot quicker!

Wanal chicks are happy on their nests despite the snow all around