ickle chicky

By early February, most of the albatross eggs had hatched and there were thousands of adorable fluffy grey chicks all over the island. Their downy feathers are so fine that they look more like fur than feathers, giving the newly hatched chicks the appearance of small squashed rodents. Adorable small squashed rodents, but small squashed rodents nonetheless.The adults brood the chicks for a couple of weeks before leaving them alone so that both parents can forage for food- it takes a lot of squid to satisfy a growing albatross. During the brood stage you will often see an adult bird sitting stoically on its nest with a tiny chick head poking out from under it, clearly pinned down and unable to move. As the chicks gets bigger the adults end up kind of balanced on top of them, legs sticking out at unusual angles, so it must be something of a relief to both parties when this phase finally comes to and end.


Another albatross enters the world.


These parents were very excited about their brand new chick.


A Laysan albatross chick.


A black-footed albatross chick.


Squished but cosy.


This black-foot chick was almost completely white.

Being a girl, cute baby animals tend to reduce me to a gibbering simpleton who will happily stand and watch an albatross chick scratching itself and pooing for hours on end. This means I now spend a large proportion of the day pointing at chicks and dribbling nonsense like "Ook at de ickle wickle fluffy chicky!". Hard-nosed biologist lady I ain't. Fluffy chicks that can't run away also tend to make me a little trigger happy, and I now have somewhere approaching 10⁴⁹ photos of albatross chicks. It was pretty difficult to whittle them down to these few, but hopefully they give you some idea of what I'm up against. On your marks, get set, awwwwwww.











The chicks very quickly become enormously fat, thanks to their diet of fish and squid. Adult birds will partially digest whatever they catch and convert it into an energy rich oil which they feed to the chicks. The oil provides an efficient way of transporting food over large distances, since adults routinely fly thousands of miles on fishing trips.


Another tasty meal of regurgitated semi-digested squid oil.


Adults will guard the chick for the first couple of weeks.


Sometimes the whole family hang out together.


"Muuuuuum!"

One of my jobs on the island is to monitor albatross reproductive success within four designated plots. This involves checking each nest within the plots every 4-5 days and keeping track of who is there and what is going on. During incubation the band number of the incubating adult is recorded, and after the chick has hatched I keep a record of chick survival rates. From quite an early age the chicks will leave their nest cup and wander around, and since one albatross chick is pretty much indistiguishable from another, in order to keep track of them each chick is banded with a temporary plastic poultry band. Banding the chicks is somewhat easier than banding the adults, since they are much smaller and wobblier, often displaying hilariously poor coordination. They do snap at you though, and sometimes in doing so cause a little bit of squid oil to dribble out their beak. Not the full on projectile vomit (though this does occassionally happen), but almost as if they are so full of oil that some of it just sloshes out if they move too quickly.


Banding a chick.


Each plot chick gets a unique number.


Another squid oil delivery.


Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the albatross community.

When the chicks reach their maximum weight they are much heavier than the adults, and the excess bulk is used to fuel the production of their flight feathers. At this stage the chicks still cannot walk upright, being too fat for their legs to support them, and instead shuffle around on their hocks looking like little arthritic old people. As they get older they start to 'practice' flying- extending their stumpy wings and flapping them until they stand up, then plopping back down onto their bellies after a few seconds.


Staring into space.


Projectile poo.


Albatross chicks on East Island.


The bowling pin look is popular this season.

The older chicks are very curious and will shuffle around looking for stuff to play with- feathers, twigs, pebbles, the carcasses of dead birds, whatever they can find. If you sit quietly by them they will sometimes come and investigate you, and will happily spend several minutes nibbling at a proffered hand or flipflop. Being nibbled by an albatross chick is one of life's greatest pleasures- I thoroughly recommend it.


Caitie and friend.


Playing with a feather.


Playing with the author's hand.


Wardrobe malfunction.


I'm the king of the world!


The awkward teenage phase.

Written Sunday 31st January: Home Sweet Barracks

In case you were worried that I am spending my six months on Tern Island living in a sub-human, cockroach-infested shack with a bucket for a toilet, I thought I would describe our accommodation. The building we live in is affectionately known as The Barracks. Built by the coastguard in 1978, The Barracks were designed to house many more people than currently occupy them. The building is shaped like a square U, with each arm of the U being a long corridor and the bottom bit being an enormous, open-plan common room and kitchen area and a large food store room. Although The Barracks were no doubt once shiny and robust, years of exposure to wind, sun, salt spray and the action of termites have taken their toll, resulting in a somewhat dubious structural integrity. The roof leaks, the walls are cracked, the door frames are warped and occasionally a piece of the building simply falls off.


Tern Island Barracks.

The southernmost of the two corridors has 16 bedrooms and two bathrooms, and I therefore not only have my own room, but have comandeered two others, one for drying clothes and another as a kind of study. The northern corridor has fewer bedrooms but these are larger and en suite. These rooms are reserved for 'officer' class personnel only (ie. Pete) whilst the southern corridor is for the rest of us grunts.


The South Wing.


My quarters.


This mysterious sign is taped to the ceiling of my room. Can anyone tell me what it says?

The common room is gigantic, with not one but two pool tables, a ping-pong table, a fusball table, a huge TV, multiple sofas, a 14-seat dining table and Tern Island's enormous collection of books (600 odd). Like I said it's quite big. The kitchen is similarly well appointed with several fridges and freezers, toaster, microwave, coffee machine, gas cookers and so on. However, we do occasionally get a reminder that we are living in the wilderness, as the following photo demonstrates:




The common room.


The comfy area.


The eating zone.


The dishwashing region.

Contrary to what you might expect, we do not subsist on spam and backed beans. The store cupboard has a huge selection of dried and canned goods (including, but not limited to, spam) and we have freezers full of meat, fruit, veg, cheese, yoghurt, bread, and even ice cream. Everyone takes turns at cooking for everyone else, except on Sundays when everyone fends for themselves. To my great relief I have not managed to cook anything that was truly inedible yet (apart from a packet mix cheesecake which had been in the storeroom for several decades and apparently packet mix cheesecakes don't last that long). There was some initial confusion with the American weights and measures system- they measure all ingredients by volume rather than weight, and it took me a very long time indeed, for someone who has undergone such a protracted and expensive education, to figure out that one cup of water and one cup of flour do not weigh the same amount. This led to me producing a series of hilariously short cakes (about a quarter inch tall) though everyone kindly said, after they had stopped laughing, that they tasted OK.


Tern Island supermarket.




These old artillery cases now have a more peaceful purpose.


Preparing another delicious meal.

All of our freshwater comes from rain collected from the roof of the building and also from an area of concrete next to The Barracks which used to be a tennis court in the more decadent coastguard days. The water funnels down into an underground cistern and is pumped into five enormous cedarwood storage tanks, each capable of holding 12,000 gallons. This way enough water is collected during the winter to last through the drier summer. Before coming out of our taps the water passes through a ferocious array of filters, a wise precaution since the roof is liberally splattered with guano and the occasional bird carcass. First there is a sand filter, then two porous filters (25 micron and 5 micron), then a UV filter, then a charcoal filter, producing water that is drinkable but which tastes a little funky, so all drinking water is Brita filtered as well.


Three of the five water towers.


The sand filters, with the author for scale.

Washroom facilities in The Barracks are none too shabby either- we have sinks, flushable toilets, showers and even a washing machine. This is a desert island, however, so water is strictly rationed. Thus we only flush the flushable toilets when it is absolutely necessary, we only wash our clothes when they are so completely caked in dirt that they have lost all flexibility, and I personally, in the name of water conservation and for no other reason at all, like laziness for example, have reduced the number of showers I take to one per week. Perhaps it is a blessing for the other residents that I have my own room at the far end of a long corridor.

Electricity and hot water are both provided by solar panels on the roof, though we also have two diesel generators for pumping water into the tanks and in case of a sunlight shortage. Fortunately there has not been a shortage of sunlight since I have been here, and feel free to hate me for being a little smug about that.


The impressive solar array.


The solar panels have to be de-guanoed every week.


This albatross chose to nest under our washing line. It has never helped hang out the laundry though.


These black noddies like to use our picnic table for sunbathing.

As if the flushing toilets, suite of rooms, microwave oven and dysentry-free water were not enough, Tern Island also has its very own, very exclusive gym. This is found in the recently refurbished warehouse and consists of a room full of weight machines, punchbags and an exercise bike, all elderly and gently rusting in the salty atmosphere. Some of the equipment works fine but some of it is nothing short of terrifying. One weight machine in particular looks like at any moment the high tension cables holding it together might snap and decapitate you. This particular machine is called 'The Crossbow' after its striking resemblence to said weapon of death. I think more pieces of gym equipment should be named after medieval machines, and look forward to working out on 'The Rack', 'The Iron Maiden' and 'The Brodequin'.


The most exclusive gym in the world.

So, in short, for a field station Tern Island is nothing short of luxurious. But I should add, in case you thought I was getting a little too comfortable here, that it is infested with cockroaches.


This is where we keep the turtles.