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

fish's? There was a lovely tern chick to hold weighing only 15 g. In the evening Derek
and Jim and I climbed to the top and looked for prions nests, finding one with two
birds and several with eggs; also Wilson's petrels were at their nests. Another day we
walked over to Gourlay by Moraine Valley and the ablation channel. The snow made
the going difficult and the skuas mobbed us although they had no nests nearby. We
watched the chinstrap penguin chicks and the large Adélie chicks - some in their
thick brown down overcoats and pear-shaped figures like small Falstaffs. I found
again one I'd seen earlier which had three legs – rather a gruesome sight.
One mid January afternoon I did a nest round assisted by Jim and Charlie, which
took over three hours; three snowy chicks in the colony were dead. Next day we had
a good run down the ablation channel to visit Gourlay again and inspected the tern
colony for young, with no luck; the first tern nest still had eggs. In the evening, when
I went around the nests on the crags, there were three new snowy chicks. It was
getting late and I started for home as the sun began to dip. The skuas which were
perched in pairs on all the commanding points evidently suspected me of bad
intentions towards their chicks, and swooped at me, often calling in a wild way, but
turning upwards at the last moment when it seemed certain that they would take my
hat off. One gets used to it and they rarely touch one but even so it can be rather
unsettling.
20 January was a foul day of blizzards and when I went around the nests in the
evening there was only one new Cape pigeon chick. Brash ice, with terns sitting on it,
filled the cove, there were heavy seas and blizzards, so virtually zero visibility. In the
next few days Charlie helped me with the birds and we weighed and measured 24
one day, while the wind was not too strong. The young snowies and Cape pigeons
were getting rather tiresome in their attentions to us and our clothes reeked of petrel
vomit. We measured and weighed the other birds; one of the tern chicks in the first
nest had now hatched. A giant petrel chick was missing from one nest, which
explained the remains we found the previous day just below it - a skua kill no doubt.
I took several photographs of Cape pigeons, reflected as they paddled amongst the
brash ice, Cape pigeons and chick, young tern and parent, prion at nest, and an
elephant flipping gravel. It was very hot and we peeled off a layer of clothing.
Four days later Derek mixed petrol and oil for the outboard and carried it down
in readiness for an afternoon trip. John was going to be occupied, but the rest of us
went over to Gourlay. The Seagull engine was working very well and we took only
25 minutes over the journey, in spite of the fact that there was a very heavy swell.
Several penguins accompanied us and we surprised several elephants. Wind and
swell made landing at Gourlay tricky, but kept the bergy bits and floes out. Charlie
and I began weighing and measuring penguin chicks in the study colony and Derek
went off around the coast, geologising - and seal counting for me. We two spent 2 1 2
hours on the penguins, by which time Derek was back, and I managed to break the
thermometer taking the (rectal) temperature of one fractious chick. We found a
couple of young skuas, but had to run the gauntlet of the parents. They were
delightful little balls of light cinnamon-coloured fluff with grey legs and bill, and a
persistent squeak. A few days later we wandered down to the moraine to examine a
skua's nest, which contained two larger young - all legs with a surprising squeakwhistle,
like a mechanical toy. We resisted the attacks of the parents and retired.
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