Plod, plod, plod

I spent last Monday to Friday off station, on another walking adventure. Most days the weather was not so great, a few clear periods (and a little sunburn), but mostly fog and drizzle were the order of the week. There's not as many photos as there could be, but that's because I didn't feel like taking as many pictures this time - and because of the fairly poor weather, there wasn't a huge amount to take photos of. However, here's a few of the good ones:

The royal penguin rookery near Waterfall Bay Hut

I travelled the length of the island again and one of the highlights was on the walk back towards station, when I met up with one of the dog handlers. I had the luxury of taking Flax the labrador back to the hut that we were both staying in that night.

The tourist vessel Akademik Shokalskiy taking a look at Lusitania Bay

Flax, arguably the best dog on the island

Juvenile royals on the beach at Green Gorge

A skua decided to see if my boot would be a satisfying food source. Obviously the blade of grass wasn't cutting it.

A young punk king penguin.

As always, I had a great time with everyone out there in the field and look forward to seeing them in the next couple of weeks for Christmas.

The Friendly Weaner

I went for an early morning wander around station on a lovely, still morning (the afternoon wasn't) and was greeted by the sight of a weaner with its mouth against the balloon shed doors and nuzzling the bolts. One of his mates, who was a few meters away, suddenly took an interest in me and came bounding over. Here's a little video of what happened:

For some reason this little guy was completely obsessed with my boots, it's a wonderful thing having this wildlife around.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.