For the past 4 1/2 days I've been out on Bowen Island with Sandra, conducting our last visit of the breeding season. Once the last group of chicks has grown up (which should happen in the next few weeks or so) the entire colony will leave the island and head for sea, where they'll stay until the adults come back for the moult in February (the chicks stay out at sea for several years before coming back to claim burrows and mates). This time it was just Sandra and I on the island which was just as beautiful and remote as last time. We drove down to Jervis Bay in the early afternoon on Tuesday (after getting the okay from Martin that morning - the trip was very impromptu . We had a midday lunch stop at Subway (delicious to get to taste some food from home. Bonus, it's almost exactly the same price as back home which means it is very cheap for Australia standards.) We didn't linger in Jervis Bay for long, just enough to meet up with Marin, load the gear and head out to sea.
Since it was around 5:00pm by the time we rolled into Jervis Bay, it was already getting late by the time we got our gear carried up to the house. We immediately started to set up the fence for the nightly recaptures. By the time we were done with that it was almost sundown (aka "penguin time.") so we hastily made a cup of tea, and grabbed a quick bite (some of our subway leftovers served nicely) and headed down to the beach to wait.
The first night was pretty good, we caught 128 total, 13 of which had microchips. (Either I was getting better at handling the penguins or they were just more acclimated to us or they were just in better moods cause I managed to avoid getting severely bitten on this trip. Unfortunately Sandra couldn't claim the same. One particularly grumpy adult clamped onto her finger and held on for several solid seconds, after we pulled him from his burrow to check him for a microchip. Can you blame them?)
Fence/corral for the penguins
Some of the locals :)
Fuzzy Penguin chick!
They are master escape artists (or at least they try to be)
Notice the blue feathers under the fuzz - As they get older the blue will get darker till it's basically black,
Some more nature shots of the Island:
After our nightly excursion, Sandra and I headed back to the house for some dinner (delicious pasta with creamy alfredo-like sauce), another round of hot tea and finally to bed (around 1:00AM).
We spent the morning sleeping in before heading out to do the routine burrow checks. This time we brought several of the white plastic pipes that were lying outside the house (probably remnants of Martin Fortescue's old work), so that we could permanently mark the burrows Sandra is studying. The Island is overrun with an invasive species of tall grass called Kikuyu (sp?) that the National Park has to cut back every year (using cutting and controlled burning). The grass grows very quickly so there was no guarantee that Sandra would be able to find her marked burrows again next year unless we added something more visually eye-catching. We pounded the pipes into the ground next to the burrows and added bright red tape around the top. Then Sandra wrote the burrow number on the pipe as well, so there wouldn't be any confusion about which ID number it was. Since we were adding markers, the burrow check took a little longer than normal, but since time was a luxury on Bowen Island, it wasn't a problem :) Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see Oreo again (this time we had come prepared with a fancy hi-tech camera), nor did we get a chance to get blood samples from his parents. But maybe we'll get lucky and they'll hatch Oreo Jr. next year!
Below are some more pictures from the trip:
Bedroom
Kitchen area
Fencing area (before the penguin invasion ;) )
One microchipped penguin
"Penguin in the Headlights."
Protecting the burrow from intruders
Giant Huntsman spider that lived in the bathroom.
They're so big that you can see their eyes shine when you flash them with your light.
Leaving was slightly bittersweet. I was excited to head back to civilization and my soft, comfy bed (plus my parents have landed in Australia and the Surrey-Bergman family is about to be finally reunited! sin puppy dogs, sadly) However my time with the penguins has been amazing from start to finish (even despite the penguin poop, bites and enormous spiders), and I will remember it forever. Since all the penguins are about to head off to sea soon to avoid the heat of the summer weather, that was going to be Sandra's last trip to the island this season. I wish I could go back with her next year, but maybe I'll be on to different things and I guess I should step aside and let someone else have a turn playing with the penguins (maybe another SIT student?)
Goodbye Bowen Island!
Yup. Riding in the boat, in the parking lot :)
Well that sums up my adventures in Peng-landia. However the work is far from over (although the fun work is) and now it's time finally start sorting through all the results we collected and putting that into a paper. (hard to remember that this is school after all...)
Even though back home everyone is/was prepping for Turkey Day, here in Australia where Thanksgiving does not exist, everyone/everything is getting ready for Christmas. There are literally christmas songs being played on the radio, advertisements for christmas shopping opportunities, and i even heard that a "santa" would be visiting one of the local malls sometime in the next two weeks. As someone who refuses to listen to christmas carols until after Thanksgiving is well over, this has really been messing with my head. Sandra and I both agree that it's messed up to celebrate christmas in a place with no snow (sorry all my Californian friends, but that's just fact. How do you argue with the fact that 9/10 christmas song make some reference to snow falling or bundling up by a warm fire?) Bottom line: i can't accept that Christmas has arrived when there are palmtrees outside my window and I'm walking around outside in shorts and a tank top :P
Two more weeks in Sydney then it's back to home sweet Cairns for a brief reunion with the group, (I'm thinking a trip to the Woolshed and Gilligans, our two favorite clubs?), a surprise trip from Tony/the program to no-one-knows-where, and then it's time to board Quantas flight 5681 for home.
Until that time however.....
Peace, love and Happy Turkey Day! (a little belated) Hope
This weekend I went out with Sandra again to conduct penguin recaptures, this time to Lion Island, which is a small island located at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River in Broken Bay. The name was apparently given because the island supposedly looks like a crouching Sphnix from a distance (see picture below)
(Google) Personally, I see more of a whale....
I met Sandra outside a hostel in the town nearby and she drove us to a marin about 25 minutes North of Narrabeen (where I'm currently staying). Coming with us this time was Tony, a woman also working at UNSW who just completed her 5-year PhD study on sharks. She was studying how sharks are able to bite through tough substances, such as sea turtle shells, when their jaws are made of cartilage and by definition should not be capable of such feats of strength.
At the marina we were met by the handsome men of the New South Wales Water Police force, who kindly gave us passage to the nearby island. Oh, and I forgot to mention: it is pouring down buckets at this point. In true Australia fashion, the rain comes in episodes, with brief periods of light drizzling, interspersing the torrential down pouring. (I'll admit, a part of me was hoping that the weather would be too bad and the water police would advise us to turn around and wait for another time to go out to the island. But unfortunately/fortunately (?) that was not to be.) We boarded the Water Police boat (feeling very important and official, loaded up all our gear and we were off, battling the choppy waves and speeding rain drops. The W.P drove the boat up onto the beach of a tiny, uninhabited island, with just a small stretch of sand (maybe 20 meters across total?) just visible in the increasing grayness. It took many trips back and forth, making our way cautiously along the edge of the boat and trying our best not to accidentally get pitched into the frothing waves below, before handing our bags off to the person on the beach. We said thanks to the W.P for all their help and then ran to try and stow our gear under the small overhangs of some nearby rocks, in a desperate attempt to prevent them from getting even more throughly soaked. I'm starting to notice a trend: each weekend I've gone out to collect penguin data, it's started off by raining. Hard.
This Island is protected and no one is allowed to land
here without permission. We kept getting weird looks all weekend
from passing boats, wondering what we were doing there.
With the rain starting to let up a bit, we set about pitching the tent and trying to get settled in. Once we had the bags inside and our sleeping area set up, it started to feel much more cozy and homelike. The tent was surprisingly spacious and fit all three of our sleeping bags quite comfortably. After setting up camp, our next order of business for the day was to go around and do burrow checks on the 16 burrows that Sandra had previously identified on her past trips. Unlike Bowen Island, these burrows were a little bit more difficult to reach and some were high up on cliffs! (I still have no idea how the penguins manage the climb on a regular basis, especially since they only really have their back feet as a means of propulsion and movement). On the burrow checks I got to see a few more fluffy penguin chicks and a couple of angry adults that were not very happy when we pulled them from their burrows to check them for microchips. (A few of them were sitting on eggs. Penguins around NSW commonly do what is called, "double-brooding" where they will raise more than one nest of chicks in a single season. Due to the lateness of the season right now, it appears that many of the pairs are about to raise or are in the process or raising their second batch of chicks).
Very pretty burrow. Notice the nice garden they have growing next to their doorstep :)
View from the beach (notice the dark storm clouds :P)
Home Sweet Home :)
Entire campground. The blue tarp is keeping our food supplies dry
Cool rock formations that contained some of the burrows
We ran into these three during the checks.
Definitely seemed like it would be a little cramped.
(One adult plus two fuzzy chicks)
That night the rain picked up again, so we were forced to make a makeshift lean-to out of the tarp and some pieces of driftwood that we found. (It was not the most sturdy of structures and I'm sure Bear Gryllls or Survivorman would have been shaking their heads with disappointment, however it served it's purpose for the most part and we stayed fairly dry-ish). We cooked some pasta with a creamy alfredo sauce for dinner (before you get excited and envious of our cooking skills, it was a couple of those instant "just-add-water" packages." What was really cool was the awesome little cooker Sandra brought that runs on ethanol instead of gas. It was surprisingly efficient and we had dinner cooked in record time. I have to say that when you're as wet and cold as we were, nothing in the world is more satisfying than a hot meal. :)
After dinner we settled in for the long wait till the penguins started arriving. The Lion Island colony is significantly smaller than the Bowen Island one, and Sandra said she would typically only recapture about 20 individuals in a night. That first night we had to wait an extra long time (or maybe it just felt that way because of the rain), before the first raft of about 8 penguins came ashore. It was unclear whether the rain was a deterrent or not since we did manage to catch about 15 previously microchipped penguins, which is a good number to get. It got extremely difficult to see the penguins after a while as the rain and overcast sky hid all possible sources of light, and we found ourselves squinting into the dark, trying to see the characteristic small black shapes make their way awkwardly up the sand past our makeshift shelter.
After about an hour or two of penguin catching, throughly soaked and freezing, we decided to call it a night. Taking turns getting ready for bed, we one by one crawled into the tent, which stayed mercifully dry and warm throughout the storm, and snuggled into our sleeping bags. Even though the rain was not fun to be in, it was soothing to hear the pattering of the rain on the tent as I was falling asleep.
The next morning was still a bit gray and overcast, however we did not feel a drop of rain after that first night. :) We were all awakened around 4:00AM by the loud calls of the penguin colony, as they woke up and headed out to sea for the day. But we all fell back to sleep and woke up again at the more reasonable hour of 9:30AM. (The combination of the penguin noise, the crashing waves, the sunshine streaming into the tent (and then the proceeding temperature increase as the sun got hotter/brighter) and the uneven ground, I cannot claim it was the best two nights of sleep I've ever had..) After a breakfast of cereal and muesli bars, we went around and did burrow checks again, before returning to camp for an afternoon of relaxation. With the sunshine occasionally coming out, we got to spend the day napping, reading and listening to music, waiting for time to pass. (not a bad life!)
Afro-chick!
Sandra, about to check for a microchip
Around 5:30PM we went and fixed the fencing (as i mentioned in the last post, we have to take down parts of the fencing every night to allow the penguins to go out to fish in the mornings), and prepared dinner (instant noodles this time), before sitting down to wait for the nighttime penguin show. It was about 10x more enjoyable tonight, especially since we got to see one of the most beautiful sunsets i've ever gotten to witness.
That night we managed to catch 16 marked penguins. Below are some of their candids :)
This one is poking his head out of his burrow, looking to see where the light is coming from
We woke up on Sunday morning, did one last burrow check and then packed up camp. Despite the rain packed first day, it was a very unique and interesting experience, although not one I would be in a hurry to try again right away ;) (Now i can claim to have really done "field" work!) The Water Police picked us up on the beach and we headed back to civilization. Now I'm lying comfortably in my bed on 139 Veterans Parade, Collaroy Plateau, appreciating just how wonderful a feather down mattress really is :) Oh and also having a working bathroom/toilet. Basic necessities that one often forgets to be grateful for.
I realized that I never posted pictures of my lodgings here in Sydney. My apologizes. I will remedy that here :)
My comfy bedroom. (still so weird to have personal space
after a semester surrounded by 19 other people!)
Chelsea's room
Nearby Lake Narrabeen
One of the locals
Jacaranda Tree. These beautiful trees are EVERYWHERE.
And I cannot get over the amazing color!
Their trunks are pretty cool too :)
Another shot of the lake. This is where I go running (whenever I get up the motivation to actually go :P)
I cannot believe that in less than a month I will be boarding the Quantas jumbo jet that will fly me back to Dallas TX, and then back to Boston. It feels like just yesterday I was sitting on my bed at home writing my very first blog post and wondering what adventures the new semester would bring me. Looking back, I could not have asked for a more incredible experience. Yes, there were some ups and downs, but overall this trip gave me exactly what I needed. I wouldn't say this trip has been a life-changer, but then again that wasn't what I was going into the semester hoping it would be. What it was and what I really wanted was simply a break and a chance to immerse myself in something entirely new and different from what I was used to. And you can't really get much farther away than Australia! :)
That's it for now folks! Shout outs to all my amazingly talented friends who danced in Conn College's "Fusion" Performance this weekend! Wish i could have been there to support and dance with you all! <3
Peace, love and penguin fuzz. :)
(hey, it almost rhymes!)
The blog post that everyone (including me) has been waiting for. PENGUIN TIME!
So this Thursday around 5:30pm, I braved the Sydney bus system for the second time, and travelled to UNSW to meet my advisor Sandra for our 2 hour car ride out to Jervis Bay. As I made my way into the city, it started to downpour and didn't show any sign of letting up as I arrived on campus. (I prayed it was not a bad omen :P) I met up with Sandra in the parking lot, who was accompanied with another PhD researcher who works in her office (Oliver, who is also from Germany and is studying Bottlenose Dolphins in Western Australia), and an honors student named Martin, who is about my age and is friends with Sandra from the work they've done together in the genetics labs at UNSW.
At 7:00pm, the four of us piled into Sandras rental car along with all our gear (including fencing equipment, food for the entire weekend and all our personal gear) and we started our journey. With a quick stop for kebabs around 9:00, we finally arrived at the guest house maintained by the Booderee National Park (which contains both Jervis Bay and Bowen Island). The house was sparsely furnished but suited our basic needs quite well.
Living room of the house. Could be very comfortable long term, if needed.
We woke at 8:00am for a quick breakfast and then drove to the National Park station where we met up with Martin Fortescue, the national park services manager, who knows Bowen Island very well, having conducted his own PhD study on the Bowen Island penguin population some 20 years ago. He took us over in a boat, helped us carry our belongings up to the house and showed us around a bit. The house
was a bit on the rustic side, having been built about years ago by Martin himself and another ranger at the field station. It has four bunk beds, a modest kitchen and a temperamental electrical system run by solar panels. There is a shower but it has stopped working due to a broken hookup between the water tank and the house and the toilet does not flush and requires a bucket of water to flush it. But it became very cozy after a while, although I could not imagine staying there for months at a time, which Martin did when he was conducting his own studies.
Home sweet home!
Just before we left, these two fellows landed next to the boat ramp
I couldn't get over how large they were! They could eat the US species for breakfast!
On the way to Bowen Island, aboard the Sea Eagle!
Our gear
Accompanying us for part of the first day was Joel, a reporter for the ABC radio station who was doing a story on the Little Penguin population for an ecology segment, which included interviews with Martin and Sandra on their research. To demonstrate for Joel and us, the correct way to handle the penguins, Martin reached into a nearby burrow and pulled out an almost fully fledged chick ("fledged"= lost all its baby fluff. Most of the chicks we saw had lost most of their fuzz, with only a couple of small patches remaining. It looks really funny when it comes off, and makes them look like they're wearing fur mufflers). To pull out a penguin, you have to reach your hand into the burrow depths and try to feel for their feet, because you only want to pull them out feet first, never by their wings or any other body part. That's not the say the penguins are willing to come out - the word that most adequately describes them is, "feisty." :P
Reaching into the burrow to find a penguin
A typical burrow
Another burrow
Covering their eyes helps them calm down. The black and white pattern helps them blend in while out at sea: floating on the top of the water, they are hard for aerial predators to see (ex: white-bellied sea eagles), while their white bellies makes it hard for fish to see them from above.
Penguin tongue! It's serrated to help them grab and hold onto fish
First penguin interaction of Bowen Island
After Martin and Joel left, Sandra took the rest of us to start conducting the "burrow occupancy checks," on burrows that she had previously located on prior trips to the island. This entailed looking into the burrows with flash lights to see if they were occupied (either by adults, chicks or both). Usually one parent will stay in the burrow with the chick/s while the other goes out to sea to fish. Occasionally both parents will go out to hunt (or if there is a single parent raising the chicks), leaving the babies alone. Depending on how far the fishing grounds are, the adults can be gone for days at a time. The Bowen Island colony is lucky in that their feeding areas are relatively close by, allowing daily feeding trips to be made. (This is also good news for us because it increases our chances of recapturing a marked individual).
On the first day we just left the penguins in their burrows but on the second and third day we started pulling out adult/chick pairs if we found them in the burrows so that Sandra could collect some blood samples from their feet. She is analyzing and comparing the genetics of parent/offspring pairs to study connectivity between colonies and genetic dispersal. Although I will not be using any of the genetic results, I got to assist Sandra in the actual collection process as well as help by restraining the "subjects." This meant that i got to get some face time with some very adorable baby penguin chicks.
Like I mentioned before, most were almost fully fledged and looked a lot like the adults, but here and there we ran into some pretty young individuals.
Sandra doing burrow checks
Collecting blood from a foot vein
Martin weighing a penguin
Martin learning what it mean to be a penguin
Real "field work."
Some were better subjects than others
Fuzzy baby!
Fuzzy bum! They start losing their baby fluff from the tail first. The new adult feathers are more bluish than the full adults, providing us with some method of differentiating between the ages.
More penguin cuteness!
Dreams do come true! :D
After the burrow checks were completed, we spent the rest of the day settling in and getting used to our surroundings. Towards mid day we headed down to the beach to set up the fencing for the recaptures. During Sandra's previous trips she marked about 50 individuals with microchips and released them back into the colony. Based on how many she is able to "recapture" or re-encounter on follow up trips, will allow us to estimate the total population.
We ran the fencing along the top of the beach, with a funnel feeding into a small makeshift corral. About half an hour to forty-five minutes after sundown, "rafts" of penguins start washing up on the beach, after a long day of feeding out at sea. They are all eager to get back to their burrows since many of them are parents with hungry chicks at home to feed. However our fence stands between them and their destination, and the only available option is to follow the fence into the corral. Once we had a group contained, we would be able to check each individual for a microchip before letting it go outside the fence. If a penguin did have a chip, we would write down the number, weigh it, and then release it.
After a dinner of spaghetti with marinara sauce, we bundled up against the wind and potential penguin bites, ("dressing for success" we called it), and walked down the beach, in time to catch a beautiful sunset. Armed with head lamps and pairs of heavy duty work gloves, we each took up a position around the net and sat down to wait for the first raft to arrive. They literally do arrive in rafts - at first you hear, rather then see them in the darkening twilight, the frantic paddling of about 20 flippers, propelling their owners towards the beach. As my eyes adjusted, I could just make out a bunch of small, beaked heads poking up above the surface. Once they landed, the group stood by the water for a while, trying to determine whether it was safe to cross. Then they would slowly make their way across the beach, stumbling on the soft, deep sand. Occasionally something would spook them and they would scuttle back to the safety of the water, only to try and gear up the courage for another attempt. We let them make their way into the corral, before we switched on our headlamps and started penguin chasing. For such small birds with such tiny legs, they can move quick when they want to. And what they lack in size they definitely make up for in spirit. If they felt cornered they would turn around and face us, beaks open, making a sort of hissing noise, while flailing their flippers in an attempt to make themselves look bigger and more intimidating. (It was actually more adorable than scary). Even once we actually grabbed them, they refused to give up - despite the gloves my hands received numerous bites and bruises.
New look: Penguin in the headlights
confused penguins
stampede!
scanning with microchip reader
The first night was not very successful - we only got 11 recaptures out of 189 penguins total. Compared to Sandra's previous results, this was not a very high number. But the next night was better, we got more than 15 recaptures. That night we also got to meet a very special chick that we named, "Oreo." (I'll let you figure out why ;) )
Say hello to "Oreo!"
We're hoping that the Toronga Zoo in Sydney or another facility might take interest in Oreo and want to house him, since his chances of survival in the wild are not that good (given his odd coloration which will impede his hunting success as well as make him an easier target for predators). We often did some of the blood samples at night, and I realized that by scooping the penguins up in the dark, shining bright lights in their faces, holding them down (and potentially covering their eyes with a cloth), pricking their feet to draw blood and then dropping them back on the ground.....it all sounds a lot like an alien abduction story :P (hence the name of this post).
Our daily schedule went something like this:
Sleep till 10 am, breakfast till around 11:00-11:30. Do half the burrow checks, midday break around 12:30-1:30. Finish the burrow checks/blood sampling. Laze around/go to the beach/read/nap until 6:00 when we made dinner. 7:00pm head down to the beach to fix the fencing (we had to take it down every night after the sampling so that we wouldn't impede the individuals that went out to fish early in the morning). The first rafts would normally start coming around 8:00pm and we would usually finish around 11:00-12:00am. We would take down part of fence so that the morning shift going out to sea wouldn't be impeded. Then we would walk back up the path to the house, avoiding the occasional penguin out for a nighttime stroll. The penguin colonies were always alive at this time, and we saw many heads and butts poking out of nests, and heard loud greeting calls as the partners greeted each other after a day apart. After a cup of hot soup/tea, it was off to bed, serenaded by the loud squawks and calls of the penguin colony. (see sound clip below) They would quiet down eventually, only to start up again around 4:30AM :P
To close the post, I'll leave you with some pretty shots of Bowen Island:
Next post: my adventures with the penguins of Lion Island.
