An unexpected visitor - 18 April to 24 April

This week has been rather a failure on the achieving anything work related front. Firstly, Richard finally (I say finally because it has taken three months) decided what I should do with the remaining sixty GLS trackers, deploy a quarter on the penguins now, a quarter on the Great Shearwaters now, a quarter on the Atlantic Petrels in July and the last quarter should be held in reserve. So, off I went to Seal Beach, and discovered that I was too late and all the penguins have left after the moult and will not return until September...

The Base, seen from Richmond Hill. My room is the window on the extreme left of the large building.

Next, the Great Shearwaters: now these birds still have chicks in their burrows and the adults must come in to feed the chicks, so the first thing is to determine which of the two hundred marked burrows in the Shearwater transect still have chicks and are not too deep to prevent me being able to get the adult out. So after much groveling and getting muddy, I was left with twenty seven occupied, short burrows. Now of course the adults only come in briefly, about twenty to forty minutes, to feed the chick and this happens every four to eight days. Of course this has happen at night so that the Skuas do not catch them. Now, it is impossible to see anything at night here, it is pitch black, and using a light will distract the birds so I cannot simply watch and see which adults arrive, I had to come up with another idea. I put toothpicks in the mouth of each burrow, forming a small barrier. Hopefully, the adult when it arrives will knock over the toothpicks and make it obvious that they are home. Then all I have to do is walk around, checking each burrow in turn and grab the adults. It shouldn't take more than four hours a night for a week...

I have some good news, I have been given (at last) the captive husbandry plan for the moorhens. It is necessary to establish whether it is possible to keep moorhens in cages for at least six weeks during an attempt to eradicate mice from Gough as they are at risk of either primary poisoning by eating the poison or secondary poisoning by eating dead mice. Therefore a representative sample of the population will be kept in cages to provide a starter population should the wild population be wiped out. So I have to put on my carpenter cap and start building cages. It will give me something to do when the weather is bad.

The Black Rover (www.royalnavy.mod.uk)

We had an unexpected visitor this weekend, yesterday the Royal Fleet Axillary tanker R.F.A. Black Rover sailed past. Normally we have weeks of notice of ships passing our little home but she was not logging a track on the maritime database that John checks, so it was a great surprise to look out the window and see a large grey ship steaming by. It is amazing how something like that can excite everyone in the base, we are really starved of new experiences and anything out of the ordinary is really appreciated.

A tree fern "branch"

I hope all of you will becoming to my birthday party next Saturday, I appreciate that it is quite a distance to travel but I think that if you make the effort, you will be well rewarded. Remember it is a dress-up party and anyone without a costume will be asked to leave.

I trust you all had a great Easter holiday and will enjoy all your public holidays in the next weeks.
Cheers
Nic