Friday, November 25, 2011

Beatrice the Acrobatic Weaner

The Comms techs have had the most weaners gathering around their building over the past few weeks and now we know why... They've been training the little guys to do tricks.

The Preparation
This is Beatrice. She has been practising all of about 40 seconds to perform the back-flip in pike position. Let's see if she lands it.
The Dismount
And there she goes, with the unusual method of using her face as the pivot point, rear flippers out as far as they can be stretched. But wait! Her left-hand flipper is tucked underneath, she'll lose a couple of points for technique there.

The Finish
There it is folks, Beatrice has landed her first back-flip. She's a little off to the side but it seems the judges are being lenient. That's an 8/10 - well done that weaner!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Happy Birthday Thylacine!

I'm a little late in putting this post up, actually Thylacine's birthday was all the way back in October. For his birthday I took him on the seal counting expedition and he had a great time along the way.

Thylacine made many new friends and saw some wonderful, strange looking animals. He thought they smelled funny, but would probably be delicious either way.

Thylacine helping with the nightly radio sched (where we call the station and give intentions for the following day)

After the sched Thylacine wanted a hot milo, but he got stuck and had to be rescued.

He figured that since the hunters were using dogs to try and get the rabbits, he would help out by looking down every hole he could. 
As you can see, the penguins were unperturbed by his presence

But he tried to stalk them regardless.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Daylight

With the increasing daylight, sleeping patterns are getting completely stuffed up at the moment. The sun is rising at around 3.30am and last light doesn't fade until just after 9pm. Usually I'd go to sleep somewhere around midnight to 2am, but now I'm getting some very poor sleep.

I'm glad to have the black plastic taped over my window instead of the curtains that don't work very well.

Regardless of that, on those one or two days where we do get an aurora as the light fades, a spectacular show is put on for us.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Fruit

After 6 months we finally received a shipment of delicious fresh fruit on L'Astrolabe (along with those new people who are fitting in very nicely. Pineapple, rockmelon, grapes, kiwi fruit, bananas and avocados. We were a bit greedy and they were all finished within the week. Sigh.

My mouth is watering just looking at these

They were sooooo good



Thursday, November 3, 2011

Other Birds of Macca: Sooty Albatross

Of all the albatross that call Macca home, the Light-Mantled Sooty Albatross is definitely the most beautiful. They nest on the steep slopes and wait for their partner to arrive, fly around in a paired formation and then settle down to business.

These photos are taken from around North Head and I had a lovely little sleep on the side of the hill after watching the birds.

Formation flying

Mutual preening. These two landed very close to me and I had to crawl away so as not to disturb
Sootys playing in the thermals. This was a fantastic view for a nap.