Apologies to all - 18 July to 24 July

I would like to apologize for last weeks rant, I hope that no one was offended but I really did need to vent and sadly the most convenient direction was directly at you, dear faithful reader. It is now a new week and so let us put all that behind us and move forward.

Have a nice rainbow, by way of further apology. (To make all of you jealous, this is the view from my room)

As I am sure you can already judge, this week has been better than the previous one (although being tried by the Spanish Inquisition would also have been better than last week). The weather has been great, allowing me to get out of Base for long periods. I have been doing burrow counts on the three Atlantic Petrel transects. A transect is an arbitrary line 150m long drawn across a representative piece of land. Along the transect line - alternating from side to side, like the squares of a chessboard, are equal sized squares called quadrats. Each quadrat is a 10m x 10m square in which I must count every burrow. The burrows that are the correct size for the species of interest, in this case the Atlantic Petrel, must be checked for occupancy with the burrowscope. It is extremely painstaking and tiring work. Happily it is all finished now and I will never ever have to do it again.

An Atlantic Petrel at home in its burrow. My camera got very muddy taking this, thank goodness it is washable

I have decided that Gough Island is outside of reality, adrift in a sea of strangeness. At times it has felt as I am drowning in this sea. Having contact with reality, the outside world, is truly like coming up for air. It refreshes me and helps to keep me sane. So thank you all for your phone calls, emails and any of the other hundreds of ways that you have all helped me to keep sane. I really do appreciate it.