A new job

I am pleased to confirm that I have been accepted as a voluntary trainee with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. I have also been able to go part-time in my current role, which is great as it means I still have an income coming in whilst I learn new skills to go alongside my academic qualifications.  I start part-time hours on 1st October, and will officially start with YWT shortly after that.

On Monday I met some of my new team, and helped with a water vole survey on Thorne Moor. This was a bit different from the normal water vole surveys, which normally involve checking streams/ditches. This time we lined up and carried out a search along a transect, a bit like a police forensic hunt.

The location is a different type of habitat than that normally associated with water voles. It is a lowland peat moorland. The whole area was wet and boggy, with some ditches and pools, but mostly it was wet underneath with a mat of sphagnum on top. It was hard work, trying not to sink in the bog, and looking for the tiny signs of feeding piles and latrines. We found some good signs quite close to the edge of the area, but had large areas within the centre that yielded no results. This seems to confirm that the water voles prefer areas of open water with tussocky grass and reeds; and avoid the moss covered areas.

The purpose was to establish if water voles were present. This part of the moor has already been artificially flooded to raise the water level and re-establish the wetland.  There is another, drier section of the moor that definitely does have water voles present. We wanted to establish if flooding the drier section in a similar way would have a negative impact on the water vole population there. It looks as though there will be some impact once the moss starts to fully establish itself. There may be some funding available to create small, hilly refuges with linking ditches so there is less impact to the water voles.

It was a fairly long walk from the road to the site, and we saw numerous wild mushrooms on the walk through the wood, including the poisonous fly agaric. I have since generated quite a discussion on the Yorkshire Naturalist's facebook site, and ended up with lots of recommended reading to learn more about mushrooms!

There were also lots of insects on the moor. I managed to get a photograph of a dragonfly starting to emerge from nymph, and also an empty exuvia.

The weather was kind to us despite a forecast that was cold and wet. I felt invigorated when I got home. If this is a sign of things to come, the next year is going to be fun!

Shore Thing

Today I drove out to the coast to take part in a joint event between the CIEEM and the Yorkshire Naturalist's Union. It was a beautiful late summer morning, and the weather stayed kind to us all day. Once we had gathered in the car park at 11am, we split into 4 groups of 4-5 people and made our way to the bay at North Landing, Flamborough.

The aim of the day was to complete a Shore Thing survey, an initiative by the Marine Biological Association. It carries out regular surveys to assess changes in the abundance, population structure and biogeographic ranges of a number of intertidal indicator species. Some of these are indicators for climate change.

The first part of the session involved quadrat surveys of upper, middle and low shoreline. I was surprised at the number of species we found in just a 0.5m quadrat. There were numerous different types of sea weed, and we also found anemones, limpets, barnacles, a lovely blue rayed limpet (middle picture), baby crabs, etc.

I was fascinated to learn about bryozoans (pictured in my hand below). These are colonial animals, a bit like coral. This one is forming a crust around a sea weed, and if you look carefully you can see the individual 'cells' and spikes. We also found some 'sea mats' growing on the long, flat strands of kelp.

The second session involved a 20 minute timed search, where we each went off to look search the shore-line and rock pools for three particular species. I didn't find any of mine, which I later found out was a good thing as most of the species we were searching for were invasives.

Given the number of species found in and around the shore, I think this specialist area is a step too far for me, though it was good fun to take part and learn a little bit more.

Camera Trapping Workshop

Having heard all about the latest gadgets being used by penguin biologists, it was great to come on a YWT workshop today on camera trapping. It was organised by a small company called Nature Spy, who provide the equipment to monitor wildlife in gardens and reserves.

In the morning, we had an indoor session starting with a slide show of still and video images taken using camera traps. This showed the range of shots that can be achieved, some of the issues to overcome, and also some of the history. Camera traps were first used as far back as 1890, but this is another area where the technology has really improved in the last few years, with cameras now much more discreet and therefore less likely to be seen by people and damaged/stolen.  Quality has also improved massively - as well as taking still images, audio, HD video and time lapse images can also be recorded.

We had a comprehensive walk through of a couple of models that the company use, to understand how they are set up and work, and after lunch had chance to go out and play.

We walked to Staveley nature reseve, just five minutes walk from the village hall.  We then had chance to set up the cameras - in a rather false position on fence posts by a path - and walked past to make sure they had picked us up. This revealed a couple of quirks around setting the number of photos to capture per bout, and the interval time between the sequences, with some results better than others. It is one of those things that comes with experience, and you may need to trade off the number of shots taken vs battery life.

We then had a short walk around the reserve, looking for animal tracks and finding the best places to locate cameras. It is a very peaceful reserve, though there was a lot of Himalayan Balsam around, and in a worrying juxtraposition with quite scarce plants like the broad leaved helleborine. Perhaps I can help sort that out in my new role ...

Penguin Conference Day 5

A long and tiring day marks the end of IPC8.  I’m not quite sure what my neighbours in the halls of residence were up to last night, but all the doors slam shut for fire regulations, and there were doors banging into the early hours of the morning. There was no lie in for me either, as we had to vacate rooms by 9:00am.

I somehow managed to squish everything back into my suitcase, and left it at the accommodation to collect later. I think this was the first day I made it to the first session of the morning, but Richard Sherley and Katrin Ludynia, my supervisors on the Earthwatch expedition on Robben Island, were presenting so that was double incentive not to be late.

There were a range of talks today, some about foraging and prey ability, whilst others explored new technologies available.

Richard’s talk emphasised the impact of the migration of sardine and anchovy from the Western to the Eastern Cape.  What he found was interesting about the type of food and when it was needed. He found that sardine availability in the period leading up to the breeding season was most important for breeding to take place, but that anchovy was more important for breeding success, and for chicks to progress to fledging, especially where there are two chicks per pair rather than one.  Also (probably due to over-fishing) the size and condition of sardines has reduced and this has a direct impact by lowering the body condition of adults.

Katta’s presentation was about the penguins on Dyer Island, which faces some severe challenges and may not exist in 5-10 years’ time. Although clutch size is 1.8 eggs per pair, only 0.5-0.8 are surviving to fledging.  Of these, only 25% survive beyond their first year. Many penguins are migrating away. As the island is more to the East, food availability is not a major factor. 7-8% are lost to seal predation; 4% to incidental oiling. This year, 95 chicks died from hypothermia following a major storm. A large culprit is avian predators, with 30 eggs per day taken by a large population of kelp gulls.  Models have been developed to show the impact of each of these factors.

The first really techie talk of the day was a study of egg incubation time in Adelie penguins in the Antarctic.  This involved substituting a real egg with a dummy one (viable only in non-endangered species!), which collected a range of environmental data including temperature and when the egg was turned by its parent. Interestingly temperature and wind made little difference to the egg, but snow did increase the stress level of the adult, lower the temperature and thus increase the incubation time. So ultimately if climate change causes more precipitation, breeding could take longer, eventually leading to a population decline.

A big brother moment came before lunch with Lynch’s talk. This included satellite imagery at 60cm resolution, which allowed the mapping of areas that are inaccessible. As Adelie’s have a certain nest behaviour leading to a set density, numbers of birds could be worked out from guano covered areas. One colony was mapped and measured in 4 hours from the office, as opposed to a 4 week expedition costing £k. What is scary is that the data is available at 10cm resolution or finer – which would allow identification of individual penguins – but it is not widely available for security reasons.

Another amazing talk by Hart was about camera images. These can be set up in remote parts of the Antarctic, and set up to relay pictures back to base, with batteries lasting up to a year if images are shot in time lapse rather than video stream. It records background information as well, ie. abiotic environmental data like extent of sea ice cover, weather, etc. Or, cameras can focus on individual nests to record behaviour at a finer level. It is a non-invasive way of monitoring populations, and audio capture is being explored. This can identify chicks, and their age from the type of call. The technology is constantly being improved, and they are looking at a citizen science project called Zooniverse to help process the film captured and count penguins. Awesome to think I could take part in a penguin census in the Antarctic without leaving the house!

The last presentation I am going to mention was another technology one, by Handley. In the same way that data loggers and depth recorders are attached to penguins to capture foraging data, he applied video cameras to birds to record a visual of their foraging trips. Results are still being worked through but this helps by showing actual behaviour as it happens, the environment the penguins is working in, species captured and eaten (without the need for stomach flushing or blood isotope tests), and interactions with other penguins.

I finish on that note, because tomorrow I am attending a workshop run by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on camera trapping. It will obviously be focused on terrestrial mammals, but I am hoping it will give an insight into the techniques that I could use in the future, for example for my OU project courses.

I’ve learnt lots this week about scientific method and process as well as penguin facts, so all in all an excellent week. And one more Gromit bagged at Templemeads station on the way to catch my train home :)

Penguin Conference Day 4

An early start this morning. I nipped down in to work to meet my boss and explore options for moving to part-time hours to facilitate my studying and volunteering with YWT. It was a really positive conversation, and I'm hopeful we can agree a formal arrangement soon ...

It would have meant running up the hill to the university to get there in time for the first lecture, and I'm not that fit, so I dawdled up instead and did a bit of admin while I waited for the coffee break.

Today's lectures were all themed on climate change, so it was good to link what I have been studying in Environmental Science with some of the issues faced by the penguins. Although there was some consideration of heat and increasing sea surface temperatures, more concerns were raised about the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like storms, winds and waves.

A consequence of rainstorms is that chicks' down gets wet and loses its insulating properties. Chicks less than three weeks old are particuarly vulnerable as they don't yet have waterproof feathers and can't thermo-regulate. Rebstock & Boersma found that 45mm of rain could lead to 100% chick mortality. Whilst such occurences are currently rare (once in every seven years or so), increased frequencies of extreme rainstorms will lead to increased chick mortality and decreases in colony size. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what practical action can be taken to mitigate this?

Noella Tubbs from South Africa gave a presentation on thermo-regulation,which found that the temperature at which adult African Penguins suffer heat stress is much lower than previously thought at 28.6 oC. She did experiments using 'mock' penguins she had built to assess the temperature in various nest locations, and found differences of almost 10 oC in nests just metres apart, but in sun vs shade. Shade is obviously important in providing a more ambient temperature for the adults, and will mitigate them having to abandon their nests in order to cool down in the water. Concrete tunnels seemed to offer a good alternative where bushes are not growing, by providing shade and a through flow of air.

A third aspect covered by several presenters was that of wave action, which increases with the stronger winds that come from warming air due to climate change. There were a couple of points raised. First, heavy wave action makes the water more turbid and it carries lots of sediment, making it harder for penguins to see prey and feed.  Other views considered the location and gradient of the thermocline. In settled conditions, this provides an invisible barrier above which phytoplankton thrive in the warmer waters, and fish will feed on them. This provides a distinct area that the penguins can hunt in, and many fish species will not move into the colder waters below so are easier to catch. In windy conditions, the water is mixed and the water column is a more constant temperature. This spreads out the prey, and makes it harder for the penguins to catch the fish.  In all these instances, if the parents cannot catch fish efficiently, the chicks will suffer, and increased chick mortality means fewer penguins in the future.

On that not such a happy note, be reassured that penguins are watching over us from space :)

Penguin Conference Day 3

Not a huge amount of Penguin Conference attended today I am afraid. I skipped the morning session and got some serious studying done. I sat a past exam paper (and on the basis that I could write at least something for each question I thought it went quite well ... answers not included unfortunately). Afterwards, I went through a couple of things I had queried with myself, and also did a bit more deeper reading on some of the other areas where I wanted to clarify things. It was a very productive couple of hours, with a couple of pages of revision notes and several more flash cards made. I'm feeling a little less guilty about taking a week's holiday this close to my exam.

I went up to the university in time to grab a packed lunch, and had another look around the posters in the foyer. There are probably close to a hundred posters to read, some quite technical, others more graphical and easy to understand. There was a hand-out version of the poster describing the African Penguin chick conditioning index that we used in South Africa, so I took a copy to read later as it is quite statistical and complex. There was also a copy of Leanne's paper on adult condition and breeding success, which had a familiar looking photograph on it.

After lunch one of the talks had been cancelled so there were only two left, but both about African Penguins and so most interest to me. The first by Jo Morten was about the begging behaviour of chicks, and looked at their vocalisations compared to body condition. The study was taken of hand reared chicks at SANCCOB and findings were only preliminary, but there was some evidence that the frequency (ie. pitch) of the call increased when chicks were in a poorer condition, even if the intensity and duration did not alter.

The second talk was by Peter Barham, and was about research impacting on penguins. It raised some very interesting questions, including how do we prove research is impacting penguins, as we would have to research them to prove not researching is the way to go!  It was good to relate the set up on Robben Island to the wider experiment - as volunteers, we stuck to set routes and only visited certain nests, to ensure that only parts of the colony were disturbed. In fact, the results surprisingly showed that infrequent disturbance was bad, but nests that were regularly disturbed actually bore chicks with a better condition, presumably because they got habituated to the researchers to a certain extent. Of course, those with no disturbance at all did the best. The main message though was to carefully think about the research being done, and how it could adversely impact the species you are trying to save.

There were no more lectures in the afternoon, so I took myself off on another exploration and Gromit hunt. I found lots, and I think my favorite today was Pirate Gromit (pictured). This time I set off west and explored some of the older parts of the city. I discovered some more lovely parks just minutes away from the office, and finally got to have a look around the cathedral.  It was another hot day, and after a few hours wandering around I was glad to settle in a bar for an hour and cool down over a refreshing drink.

At 6pm, there was a public event at the impressive Great Hall in the Wills Memorial tower building, part of the university. It was entitled "Penguins on Film" and there were talks from five different presenters, all with a different slant. The first gave an overview of penguins on film, from the first moving pictures done by Frank Hurley, through to modern documentaries and cartoons. It questioned our portrayal of penguins in anthropogenic terms, and some of the misconceptions films can give the public, such as penguins being faithful for life, and living in the north. The second presentation was by BBC producer Elizabeth Stone who worked on Frozen Planet, and gave a behind the scenes view of the conditions the film makers had to contend with, as well as some of their most successful film sequences. There was then a review of the Yellow Eyed Penguins, a family of whom were captured on film from egg to fledge as far back as the 1950s.

The final two presentations were more technological. The penultimate talk was 'Penguin Poo from Space' which I remembered reading about a few years ago, I think as part of my college reading. It explained how guano had been spotted using satellite images, and how this led to the discovery of new penguin colonies in inaccessible parts of the Antarctic. It ended on a somber note that similar techniques are showing the extent of sea ice reduction, with implications for the Emperor Penguins that rely on this for the duration of their breeding cycle.

Finally, there was a summary of computer image recognition. It showed some of Peter Barham's work that has used computers to capture the chest spots of penguins, and so create an ID parade from a video stream. Similar technology was demonstrated on a human, by identifying their gender, age and mood from computers working off a video feed. The video feed was provided by 'penguin cam' - yes, the real one used in the 'Spy in the Huddle' documentary.

It was an excellent evening (probably more my level than some of the lectures ....)

Penguin Conference Day 2

I skipped the first session today, but very studiously stayed in my room and finished my S216 notes and started some revision on water and rivers.

I arrived at uni for the session before lunch. Most of the lectures were about foraging habits. There was some interesting work on the African penguin colony at Stony Point, highlighting the issues for penguins in mainland colonies: big cats, tourists, wild fire etc. There was also a view of fish acoustic surveys around Robben Island and comparison with penguin foraging which was interesting but a little inconclusive.

After lunch, there were a further five presentations, with some interesting talks from non scientists about liaison with the fishery industry, and setting up biodiversity action plans. Professor Dee Boersma gave an inspiring lecture about the Galapagos penguin, which she has been studying for as long as I have been alive!

At the end of the day, there was a special presentation made. Dr Bernard Stonehouse was presented with a life-time achievement award for this work with penguins. Now in his 80's, he has been studying penguins for 60+ years and has been an inspiration to many generations of penguin scientist.

After lectures, I walked up to the zoo and managed to have a look around for the last hour before it closed. I went into the lemur enclosure but they didn't want their photograph taking. There is a baby gorilla that was running around the enclosure like a typical toddler - but my photos came out blurry. I went into the underwater viewing point to see the penguins swimming, but there were only the inca terns splashing about. So not much luck from that perspective!

I then managed to get myself completely lost in and around Clifton. I did manage to find Observatory Hill - more by luck than judgement - and got good views of both Avon Gorge and the Suspension Bridge. I have visited Bristol many times before but these landmarks have been elusively just round the corner. I managed to 'bag' a few more Gromits on my way home.  After a couple of hours walking in the warm late summer sun I was glad for a shower, microwave dinner and beer then chilling out for the rest of the evening.

Penguin Conference Day 1

I arrived in Bristol yesterday afternoon and dropped my bag off at the university halls of residence. The room is basic but will do for a few nights - quite a trek down the hall to the shared bathroom though! I walked up to the zoo and registered for the 8th International Penguin Conference, and got a huge wad of freebies including back-pack, t-shirt, pen, USB stick, highlighter, stickers etc as well as agenda and abstracts. We had chance for a quick wander round the zoo, then had an informal ice breaker consisting of a glass of wine, canapes and networking.

Today the conference started officially up at the main university building. There was an introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, then the talks began. I attended the morning and late afternoon sessions, but being self funding didn't feel obliged to stay for all the lectures. The standout lectures for me were on the power of poo (Julie McInnes et al) which looked at DNA analysis of both penguins and their prey by examining penguin poop. This is much less invasive than stomach flushing, which has traditionally been used to examine prey eaten, but can harm penguins and their chicks as their food is taken away.

Another interesting talk was on minimising nest disturbance, and using heat sensitive dots to monitor when an egg is being sat on, ie. a breeding nest is occupied.

I took a few hours off after lunch and had a wander around Bristol.  I managed to find a few of the Gromit statues - I won't have time or transport to find all 80 or so, but it was good fun and exercise looking for them. It was quite warm out, especially after climbing to the top of Cabot Tower, though there was a nice cool breeze and amazing views at the top.

The last session of the day was in the evening and was a series of short presentations from various conservation groups and charities, including SANCCOB that I visited and would love to do so again. It was good to get a slightly different, less scientific, perspective on practical steps being taken to help the penguins.

I haven't managed to get much studying done today, but have a few hours free in the morning.