Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

I began to construct what I called a ‘terragraph’ to record the visits of petrels to
their nests as they entered. It depended on a meteorological recording-drum to give
the time-base and a hinged platform, which would complete an electrical circuit
when a bird stood on it and so give a timed spike on the drum to record the time of
the visit.
Numerous snowies and giant petrels appeared - and I saw one Cape pigeon, the
first for several weeks. A poor day followed with a sudden temperature drop and
chatter from a reduced number of snowies, the giants down to a few pairs.
And sheathbills of course. From the books I had expected the latter to migrate
North to South America. At the end of August I watched a flock of 19 shags fly into
Elephant Flats from the direction of Outer Islet, then come out again and fly directly
overhead. It was a lovely sight - glossy black-and-white plumage, orange feet, and
wings beating in unison - against the intense azure of the sky. They were barely 3 m
above me, flying in an arrowhead formation. During the day we saw besides the
shags and sheathbills, several Dominican gulls and about 30 giant petrels. The
snowies were back on the crags in fairly large numbers that afternoon and we could
hear them chattering at night. One foul day, in snow and drift, the sheathbills were
nosing around the hut for blubber scraps, and Dominicans were near. In the
afternoon Ralph and I went up to the top, meeting Derek. Then we watched the
snowies and went down to the sea in the South arm of Gash Cove, where we found
sheathbill tracks leading into a cleft – so this was where they went in the winter-time!
On the way back to base Derek and I climbed up a steep slope for practice and
hacked with our ice axes through the cornice at the top. The snowies were chasing
Dominicans - I observed this three times - and there were up to 12 Dominicans
around base, all immatures. So the weeks went by, through August and September,
punctuated by blizzards and gales, and fluctuating numbers of birds, the regulars
mainly snowies and giants, with occasional Dominicans.
An unusual visitor, an emperor penguin, Aptenodytes forsteri, turned up one day,
a handsome bird that I collected for science, spending most of a day at work on
skinning it and cleaning off the fat; it was a good skin, a female - destined for the
Natural History Museum. The stomach contained many squid and fish, some
nematodes, several stones - 1 2 to 3 4 inch diameter. Some of the stones were layered
(gastroliths) and there were similar concretions on the stomach wall. Were the stones
really attached to the stomach wall as appeared to be the case? What was the nature
of the concretions? The ovaries showed many 1 4 inch and larger follicles, which
seemed incompatible with July to September breeding, so despite its large size it was
probably an immature.
Towards the end of September Derek found a very small shag colony at North
Point - 4 birds on 3 large nests – which we hadn’t noticed before. At Gourlay Point a
few days later there were large numbers of giants. Later I went up to the crags and
scrambled around, examining the snowies' nests. One of them looked very cosy -
lined with sand and numerous amphipod skeletons looking like chaff. Ralph took
one bird off its nest, getting covered with oil in the process. I was more than ever
convinced that there was a great size variation. Also I watched some fights; one
fighting pair fell to the ground locked together. The snowies appeared again in flocks
on the sea ice. At the end of September two terns flew together screaming across the
hillside; they appeared very dark, but this might have been due to the poor light. The
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