Well I guess I have to start by apologising in case it seems like I’ve been really slack and not kept you posted for the past three weeks, but the truth is we’ve been absolutely flat out and I suspect I might have been very unpopular with our guests and my team mates if I’d been writing blogs on the laptop!  The good news however is that I have LOADS to fill you in on.  Since writing my last blog I wrote one for the Trust – official company business – so, in the hope that you haven’t all already read that, I’m going to use some of that and fill you in on what else has been going on.

Since arriving at Port Lockroy we’ve loved following the progress of our gentoo neighbours as they chose their nest sites, pinched stones from one another and protected their precious eggs through the weeks of unusually wild weather we endured during the early part of this summer.  Along the way, some of the gentoos have lost eggs to the elements, predators or in some cases abandoned nests altogether.  However on 20th December when I wrote my last blog, we discovered our first chicks in a nest down by the old boat-shed.  Speaking with visiting expedition teams, we have learned that the chicks here at Goudier Island hatched considerably later than chicks in other nearby colonies, however we’re still four days ahead of when the first chicks were spotted here last year.

In the following days running up to Christmas, Laura and I took a wander around the island to check out what stage the rest of the nests were at.  We managed to find just eight nests in total with two chicks in four of them and one chick in each of the others. The majority of these were in the area around the boat-shed. This is one of nine colonies and is the lowest colony on the island. It therefore stands to reason that chicks in this area hatched first. The snow melted there earlier, allowing the gentoos to start collecting small pebbles from the shore to build their nests sooner, meaning the whole mating cycle was slightly further ahead than other colonies on the island. Typically, three days pass between mating and the laying of an egg and the incubation period is 35 days.  Each gentoo will typically try to lay two eggs and raise both chicks.

If a gentoo loses an egg, or worse still a clutch of eggs early in the season, it will re-lay and try again. In the early days most of the chicks were feeding really well and growing fast. When the parent wasn’t laying on them to protect them from predators and keep them warm, they were feeding or nuzzling into their parents wings and breast feathers.  When they first hatch gentoo chicks are around 10cm tall with long necks, cute faces and rounded tummies!  They have very soft looking downy fur (which isn’t waterproof at this age).  The fur is almost black on the top of their heads which becomes grey on their backs with a paler grey tummy and a white under-side on their long slim necks.  Each has the most adorable teeny black wings, an orange bill and over-sized orange flippers!  They grow at an alarming rate though and within two weeks they have more than doubled in size and are looking like their parent’s little mini-me’s.  The gentoos’ main predators are birds called Skuas and there are usually two or three around. They tend to perch on top of Bransfield House and the boat-shed and swoop around the colonies looking for unguarded eggs or a tasty looking Snowy Sheathbill!  Up until a couple of weeks ago, we watched them pinch eggs from time to time, but more recently they have started to pick off the odd chick and even two of the sheathbills. The sheathbills are ‘pigeon-sized’ white birds, which scurry around the gentoo nests feeding on their guano (poo) and would take a small chick if they had half a chance. The gentoos are pretty good at protecting their young though and hiss at them to shoo them away!  We have at least six breeding pairs of snowy sheathbills on the island and they all seem to have successfully created nests. Five of these are under the main building and one under the boat-shed. Rick explained that there’s usually a pair under the old whale skull by the boat-shed, but since this is where we discovered the grizzly remains of two sheathbills which had been preyed on by skuas, I think it’s fair to assume there will be no nest there this year :-/.

 

Right next to Goudier Island is Jougla Point. This is literally 30m or so from Goudier, but with no boat we can’t investigate that often. There are approximately 1200 breeding pairs of gentoos there but in amongst them are Blue Eyed Shags. Their chicks hatched approximately 3/4 weeks ago. We don’t get over there as often as we’d like, but we can see the shag chicks through binoculars and they’re now almost the same size as their parents. There is no way of confusing them though as instead of having the stunning black and white plumage and blue and yellow eye markings of their parents they are just huge brown fur balls with hungry beaks!

We have also had plenty of seals around Port Lockroy this season. In addition to the Leopard and Elephant seals I’ve mentioned before, we’ve also had as many as five Weddell seals basking in the sunshine at a time over on ‘Bill’s Island’ which we can wander over to at low tide. The most significant wildlife spot however has been the whales. Port Lockroy is a small, sheltered harbour just off the main Neumeyer Channel, which runs through the mountains along the west coast of the peninsula. Over the course of the past few weeks there have been many sitings of pods of whales in the channel itself, but it’s quite unusual for them to come into the bay.  However two Humpback whales have been gracing us with their presence. We can only guess that it’s an abundance of krill which has drawn them in. Whatever it is they’re very welcome to be here and we’re very happy to spot them out the shop window in between folding t-shirts and fleeces!

CHRISTMAS AT LOCKROY

After all of that you would almost be forgiven for thinking that Christmas had passed us by!  You needn’t worry though as we’ve been kept exceptionally busy and have been enjoying the festivities. Over the past two weeks we’ve had approximately 2,500 guests pass through Port Lockroy on 26 ships!  These have ranged from eight-passenger sailing yachts, to huge private marine vessels, to 250-passenger expedition ships, each carrying guests who just love to shop, send postcards and party!  Needless to say we’ve been happy and willing to oblige on all fronts and the dinner cooking rota was temporarily (and metaphorically) thrown out the window! We’ve really enjoyed the company of all the expedition teams, crews and their guests who have as usual been very good to us. Christmas Eve was spent on board the Polar Star where we enjoyed a lovely Christmas dinner, a guest-led Christmas play with audience participation, which had us weeping with laughter for all the wrong reasons (!) as well as salsa dancing and karaoke!  On Christmas Day we hosted visits from two ships, the Antarctic Dream and the beautiful three-masted Dutch sailing ship, the Bark Europa. Christmas lunch between ship visits consisted of oven roasted chipolata sausages, fried eggs and champagne before we made phone calls to family and sat down to some serious gift opening. Thank you to everyone who sent us all so many lovely cards and thoughtful gifts. It’s not so easy being away from loved ones at Christmas but we were really touched by everyone’s generosity and thoughtfulness. We were delighted to receive not one, but TWO ‘Penguin Bowling’ sets between us, which have already been put to very good use:-).

Another big thank you to Ann Lennox of the WI, who I met on hols in Sicily this year. Once Ann heard that I was off to Antarctica she offered to make some warm woolly hats for the team here and true to her word I received these before I headed south. They were all lovely colours and I thought it would be fun to save them as an extra little gift for everyone on Christmas Day. They went down a storm, so thank you Ann and all your friends at the WI .  Corresponding pics will be hopefully be on the blog soon!

After the visit by Bark Europa we had a short while to chill out and enjoy a power nap before joining the guests on board for dinner. For anyone who was concerned by the sound of our ‘Christmas Lunch’ you needn’t worry as a treat was in store!  The Bark is a small sailing vessel with approximately 35 guests so they have two cosy dining areas. We were seated downstairs in an oak panelled dining room with a flat screen TV showing a DVD of a roaring fire!  Dinner was Krill (penguin food!) wrapped in a pancake, followed by South African kudu, ostrich and springbok kebabs grilled on the BBQ. For all those of you who know me well, clearly the Krill wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I somehow managed to eat it and the rest of the meal was delicious !

Since Christmas we’ve had at least two ship visits per day.  Despite being exceptionally busy, the weather between Christmas and the New Year was absolutely amazing and we even managed our first ‘Port Lockroy Plunge’ of the season.  Between Christmas and New Year we also enjoyed a night out with some expedition staff to Damoy Point, another old British base in the bay adjacent to Port Lockroy. The base is now kitted out as a refuge hut and everyone keeps coming in and telling us how fabulous it is so we were keen to see it for ourselves. The old hut is amazing, complete with fully fitted kitchen (think 1960’s Antarctic hut, not Moben!), dining area and old bunk room. There’s even a darts board, a stash of Jack Daniels and ‘Emergency Baileys’!  We trekked up the snow hill (where we realised how unfit we had become living on tiny Goudier Island) and took in the breathtaking view across the bay and back down onto Port Lockroy.  Definitely a fun night out and one we’ll remember for a long time.