Penguins Day 10 - Wednesday 15th May

On the way to this morning’s task we had to take a detour, as Richard spotted a swift tern stuck in the fence in the village. It is a plasticised wire fence and it seemed to have flown in and got its head caught. Richard scaled up the 10 foot fence and rescued it. It was stunned but alive, and may have had some damage to its head and wing. We returned to the house to get a bird transportation box. The bird was then dispatched on the next ferry to the mainland, where it would be collected at the port by someone from SANCCOB (The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds) who would hopefully nurse it back to health and release it back into the wild.

After that dramatic start to the day, we did a repeat of last week’s chick conditioning round, so I went with Leanne again. We followed the same route, though this time it included a few new nests where the chicks were too small to measure last time, and a few empty nests where the P4’s had already fledged … a bit of a relief as some of them were a bit of a handful last week.

En route we saw a rather grand peacock, a small herd of Chuker Partridge that are endemic to the island, and another lovely caterpillar. The caterpillars here are similar to the drinker moth in that they are predominantly black and very hairy, though there must be several different species as they have different colourings.

It was quite hard going this morning. We started the round at about 9am and didn’t finish until 1pm, so were out for 4 hours. It was a grey, very humid morning which made it feel more tiring.  It is quite hard work trying to hold squirming penguin chicks safely without hurting them or putting yourself in the firing line.  Leanne had a technique of putting one chick in between her legs whilst we measured the other – which works well until the chick decided to projectile poop! Luckily it hit it’s sibling rather than one of us. I think I did a bit better today as I only got pooped on once, and though I was pecked at a lot, I didn’t get properly bitten.  I did manage to spray paint myself though rather than the chick as it was a particularly good squirmer.

The round was quite successful. We got to nearly the end and measured a chick that seemed quite underweight compared to its peers, but after a quick phone call to Katta decided it was within the normal range. The parent was still with it in the nest, and in any case Leanne seemed confident that it would last a good few days if it wasn’t being fed, so it could be rescued next time if necessary.

However, at our last nest we were greeted with the site of a dead P4. There were no obvious signs of attack or disease, and it seemed a healthy size and weight. It was also the ‘alpha’ first born and stronger chick. The parent and other P4 chick were still in the nest a few metres ways, and seemed fine. We measured the live chick and it seemed healthy, so it’s a bit of a mystery why its sibling died.

We got lift back to the house and had a late lunch and rest before our next task.  In the afternoon we returned to the Lepers Graveyard to deploy another dozen or so nest boxes. It was quite hard to find some of the existing/potential nests from the GPS co-ordinates given, so in the end we just sited them at likely spots (identified by footprints and poo).

In the evening, I prepared the veggies for the barbeque then had a quick shower before catching up on some notes. After dinner, we shared a few photos then got ready for an early night.