Penguins Day 2 - Tuesday 7th May

I woke a little earlier than the allotted 7:30am alarm call, but generally slept well.  We had an informal breakfast and were ready at 8:30am to set off on our first task.

Richard, Kelley and I were dropped on the road just past the harbour, and following a route called NPR-N we checked the nests for eggs and chicks.  As these are checked at regular intervals every 5-6 days, you know from the last visit what should be there.  In most of the nests, we found what was expected. The eggs and chicks all coded and the visit recorded.  Eggs were coded E0 if new (very clean and white), EU for an egg of unknown age (it’s hard to tell the age if older than a day or so up to hatching), and EA for egg abandoned if there was no adult there.  The chicks were coded P (for precocious?). P0 is new-born to 2 days old, with eyes still shut. P1 is small, young and fluffy. P2 is larger, with the parent still able to cover the chick under their wing. P3 is becoming larger and starting to lose down around the face. By P4 the chick is nearly fully fledged, with blue/grey more waterproof feathers.

If necessary we used a big stick to gently lift the adult penguin to see what was lying underneath.  We did find one new nest, in one of the new nest boxes, so labelled that up. There were also some other penguins ‘loafing around’ that might have been looking for a nest site.

We also tried to ID the adult penguin(s) that were on the nest. There was normally just one parent present, whilst the other was off fishing.  We had a book of photographs to compare to. They have distinctive spot patterns on their belly. When they are on the nest and the belly can’t be seen, there are often identifying features on the face and neck.

On the way, we had to drive through a colony of swift terns nesting literally in the village. It was like a scene out of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’. There were several dead birds in the road, and we had to dodge several others.  There are two visiting post-grads studying the relationship between weight and size of head, to gauge parameters for healthy birds. As we returned back to the house for lunch, we stopped and watched for a while as they collected the chicks up, weighted them in bags, and measured their head using digital callipers. They were then released and scampered off back to the colony. – the birds, not the post-grads.

We walked back to the house for lunch, and had an hour to chill out afterwards before our next task.

In the afternoon we did a molting check along the coast. As opposed to checking nests, we were checking out the groups of penguins hanging out along the coast. These were normally juveniles and adults who had returned from swimming from mid-afternoon onwards.

We saw lots of other birds including: guinea hen (blue head and a little crest), spur hen (more grey), peacock, swift tern, kelp gul, kestrel, black oystercatcher and an African sacred ibis … as well as lots of penguins!