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

I went over the plateau on 28 January to inspect the giant petrel nests on the West
coast. Once there I sat for some time watching an adult and chick and had a good
view of the feeding. The chick piped, raised its head and neck while still crouching,
and knocked the adult's bill. If the parent wasn't ready it made the grumbling noise,
working its throat as if to bring up the stomach contents and struck (quite fiercely) at
the chick which subsided for a few moments. After several of these preliminaries the
adult opened its bill in response to the chick's actions and the chick put its bill inside
the parent's, tremblingly moving the bill in a frenzy to feed. I did two sketches and
returned to base, making a visit to all the nests on the way. All the snowy chicks were
now abandoned by the parents and several of the Cape pigeons too. I had seen no
adult snowies during the daytime for the past few days.
One morning, in between the chores associated with cook duty, I made a ‘bird
snatcher’ from an old ski stick. It was rather like a fishing rod, with a large eye at the
end; a leather loop ran through this and was attached to a wire for closing it. The idea
was to slip it over the bird's head and neck to pull it out of its nest cranny for
handling. After the Ob. Charlie and I went around the nests weighing and measuring
and I tried the snatcher out: it saved me from a great deal of oil and vomit, but was
better with the loop arranged at right angles to the stick. Some of the snowy chicks
were now very large. I had begun to use one of the small alarm clocks as a pocket
watch and it went off when I was dealing with a young snowy - to its great surprise!
Unfortunately the giant petrel chicks had now also begun to eject oil!
On the last January day I had meant to do some sealing, but instead finished the
bird observations, which took all day. The Cape pigeons were growing rapidly and
some had variegated feathering on the wings. Temperature-taking was a slower
business as the clinical thermometer I was using really had a slightly large bulb and I
had to be very careful. I got covered in petrel oil as usual.
Next day all the exposed nests were snowed up. In snowy nests 38 and 39 the
chicks were looking very bedraggled, their body heat having melted the snow and
the resulting wetting had flattened their down - except for a few tufts on the neck.
They looked really comic, but had lost none of their accuracy in ejecting oil! Some of
the Cape pigeon chicks were sunk in snow to a depth of 6-8 inches and one parent
bird was trying to dig it out - using the bill with a flicking sideways motion - a bit
like trying to empty Borge Bay with a bucket. Many of the chicks were on their own -
all the snowies and most of the Cape pigeons. I walked over the top and into
Elephant Flats, running the gauntlet of two pairs of skuas; the skua chicks, on the
knoll at the mouth of Moraine Valley, had wing feathering free of down by now.
On 2 February we all went round to Gourlay in the morning by sea. There was a
lot of fresh ice in the sound and I steered a wavy course to avoid the lumps of brash -
some transparent and not to be detected except for the bump of them striking the
bows. A heavy swell with cross-waves tossed us about, especially off the headlands
along our way. The day, which had looked promising, worsened and soon we were
in a thick snowstorm in the middle of Paal Harbour; mist closed down to a few
hundred feet, cutting off the summits of the hills.
Arrived at Gourlay, we were enveloped in the familiar sickly sweet-sour smell, a
mixture of seal and penguin ordure. Derek and John went off around the coast and
Charlie helped me with the penguin observations. We were able to identify all but
two pairs of chicks that had left the nests. I ringed the remaining 17 so that I should
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