Gentoo Penguins

Two species of Penguins breed on Bird Island, Gentoo and Macaroni. We are lucky to have a Gentoo colony only a few minutes walk from the base, so it’s easy to pop over and take a few photos when there is some spare time.

Gentoo adult with its chick

Gentoo adults incubate for around 38 days, with the chicks brooded tightly for around 10 days. After about a month the chicks start crèching while both adults forage. After 100 days the chicks fledge having moulted their fluffy down, and look more like the adults but having a blue/grey back/flippers/head rather than a brown/black of worn adult feathers.

Adults and chicks in the colony

Gentoo’s can start breeding at 2 years old, with most birds breeding by 2-3 years.

A big chick and a smaller chick

Breeding success can vary massively depending on food availability. In a year where there is little krill available there can be a complete failure to breed successfully, with no chicks surviving to fledging. In better years you can get an average of just over 1 chick fledging per pair. This year looks good so far, with high numbers breeding, and lots of healthy looking chicks running around.

Gentoo chicks chase the parent for food making sure that the strongest chick is fed

Wandering Albatross

One of the most impressive birds on Bird Island has to be the Wandering Albatross. They are, when you get up close, just massive! Despite this huge size they are incredibly graceful birds, in the air at least.

An inquisitive adult

I takes almost 12 months for the eggs to hatch, chicks to grow, and then eventually fledge. This chick was still around on the meadows while adults have been courting, renewing their pair bonds, and displaying ready to breed.

Sitting up in the ‘meadows’ this juvenile Wanderer was rather curious of the reflection in my lens

A pair bonding

Male Wandering Albatross displaying all of its 3.5m wingspan to a female

The birds waddle around, making an incredible variety of calls, clapping their beaks, bowing their heads, sky pointing, and spreading their magnificent wings.

Displaying within sight of the base

Every nest here is individually marked, the identity of both adults recorded, and the success or failure of breeding monitored. In one area of the island the eggs are measured and weighed to give an indication of health and fitness of the female.

Me measuring a Wanderer egg, photo by Jerry Gillham

Bird Island arrival

With a variety of delays on the JCR, getting the base going at Signy, and a few hitches with scientific equipment, we arrived on Bird Island on the 1st December, 20 days after leaving the UK. The sea was a bit rough, so we were dropped off by inflatable  with only essential kit.

Our first view of Bird Island.

Finally ashore after 20 days traveling.

Once we were ashore the JCR headed round to King Edward Point where the sheltered bay gave a better opportunity for getting some work done in the windy/choppy seas. It also gave us the chance to get settled into base and have a look around before the madness of resupply.

One of my study species, a Southern Giant Petrel

Giant Petrels can be often seen on the shores of South Georgia ripping apart penguins and seals, with their heads buried in the the carcass to get to the juicy innards. After washing the blood from their heads and heading back to their nests they are rather nice birds, and can be remarkably friendly, preening your hand gently when you’re checking for an egg.

‘Big Mac’ 80,000 Macaroni Penguins, I’ll be counting them soon!

Looking down towards base from Tonk ridge

Fur seals prefer to lie on the walkways off the wet ground, this makes it interesting when you’re trying to do resupply, wheeling trollies of supplies up and down, rolling drums of waste and fuel, and just trying to get between the different buildings!

Plenty of Fur Seals on the beach

The rooms are comfortable and there is plenty of space. Bedrooms are shared during the summer and for a few days there were three of us in this room (there is a spare drop down bed over the desk. During the winter we will all have our own bedrooms.

My bedroom, I’m in the top bunk

The food store, dried, tinned, preserved foods

The dining room/lounge is a nice big room, comfortable chairs, plenty of books and DVD’s, and even a projector, screen and surround sound for a makeshift cinema. In the windows there are marine blackout blinds. These are closed at night so that night flying seabirds don’t crash into the buildings, they are attracted to the lights at night, especially when there is poor visibility. Evening meals are eaten at 8pm and cooked in turn by everyone on base. Saturdays are a three course dinner and Sundays a roast. Wednesday and Sunday nights are movie nights, with the cook choosing the movie.

Dining room/lounge

That’s all for now, my turn for the Saturday night dinner, better get cooking.

Opening Signy

Signy is a summer only base, and so needs to be opened up each year by a team of people, digging snow, hacking at ice, starting generators, starting the reverse osmosis plant to produce fresh water, unloading equipment, food etc.

The first obstacle, chunks of sea ice blocking the jetty

Digging out the snow down to the walkways

With the jetty blocked there was no option but to drag all the gear along the beach on sledges to the base.

Testing a quad-copter from the jetty

Base open, flag flying.

Good reflections

Walking over the mountains to get to the Chinstrap and Adelie colony for a spot of work.

Whilst we were there Richard Phillips and I spent some time removing geolocators from Chinstrap penguins. These tiny devices measure light level, this creates a record for the time of sunset/sunrise, as well as the day length. This data can then be then used to calculate the location enabling tracking of the animal to which it was fitted!

Whilst we were doing that the rest of the team helped the Signy zoological field assistant to move nest marking blocks which are used for marking study nests for monitoring breeding.

Adelie penguin

Chinstrap penguin

Adelie penguins lying down while Chinstraps stand.

Adelie with an egg.

Two of the field huts at Signy, and very nice they are too, much nicer than the ones around KEP!

Sailing South to Signy

Having left Punta Arenas it was 4 days sailing to reach our next stop, the island of Signy in the South Orkney Islands. There wasn’t a great deal to on board, so I spent a large amount of time watching seabirds. The winch control room was perfect for this, with comfortable seats, and good visibility to the port side of the ship and also astern where lots of birds were following in our wake.

Cape Petrel, present behind the ship almost the whole time

Wandering Albatross, the worlds biggest seabird

Antarctic Prion

Big tabular iceberg with pack ice in the background

Lying beyond 60 degrees South, and being well into summer there was practically no darkness, very reminiscent of the “Simmer Dim” in Shetland which is at 60 degrees North. Before we arrived at the summer only base we had to push through some loose pack ice where we spotted Chinstrap and Adelie Penguins, Leopard, Crabeater and Weddell Seals.

Pushing through the ice into Signy

Hanging glacier, dramatic scenery all around

Stars above the ship

Pushing through the ice

A couple of species that were quite tricky to photograph were the Antarctic Petrel and Southern Fulmar, persistence paid off though in the end.

Antarctic Petrel

Southern Fulmar

Next stop opening the base at Signy.