An abundance of wildlife

Saturday started off a bit grey and was written off as one of those days to finish reports, cleaning and maybe a bit of relaxing reading or artwork. Yet by lunchtime the sun had burnt off the mist and we saw the first blue skies in what feels like weeks. It looked an ideal day for heading up the hill, checking on what was happening on the meadows and further away beaches.

In the tussoc the Geeps are starting to assemble in their nesting locations. Many of them have been here, paired up, through the winter but they're now showing a bit more affection, mating and starting to refresh their nests with greener grasses and moss.

Pair of Northern Giant Petrels tapping at each other with their beaks in a display of affection.

Further across the island we looked down on Johnson Beach and saw it full of penguins. Over 2,000 pairs nested here last season and something approaching that number was present again (based on a very rough count from high above the beach). 

Johnson Beach, covered with Penguins.

As with the Northern Giant Petrels, it'll be another months until they're properly egg-laying and these ones weren't showing much sign of nest building apart from the odd one picking up pebbles, but Gentoos tend to do that all the time anyway out of sheer curiosity.

Gentoos in the sun.

There was a young Leopard Seal on Johnson too, with some Gentoos walking alarminly close to it, but that wasn't the end of the seal excitement for the day.

Not the best creature for a penguin to try and be friends with.

Leave only footprints.

We continued our journey round, enjoying the late afternoon sun and enjoying the fact that it's now light until about 8pm.

The view back to base and La Roche, with the narrow Bird Sound between us and South Georgia mainland.

As we dropped down into the next cove there was a head in the water. We expected it to be a Leopard Seal but the shape was all wrong. Perhaps an Elephant Seal, but I've not seen them floating upright in the water like that. I hurridly pulled out my camera and binoculars, handing the latter to Hannah who described it as an obese Harbour Seal, reluctant with such a brief view to call what we hoped – a Weddell Seal. When it came closer to check us out though there was no doubting this was what it was.

Big body, tiny face - it's a Weddell Seal.

Weddell Seals are seen here occasionally in the winter, but they're the most southerly breeding seal species, hauling out onto the pack ice to raise their young.

Following a celebratory three-course dinner to which everyone bar me had contributed (I did the majority of the washing up) we popped out to enjoy the clear evening that was brighter than many of the days have been recently.

Jerry.

The Empire Strikes Bird Island

This weekend saw the annual Antarctic 48 hour film festival. Across the continent and outlying islands bases of various nationalities put aside their work (although we still managed things like the daily Leopard Seal round) and became writers, directors, actors and editors.

Late on Friday we got sent a list of five elements, picked by last year's winners, that we were required to put in our film. These were; a ping-pong ball, a bathtub, the line 'voulez vous couche avec moi, ce soir?', the character of 'the gingerbread man' and the sound effect of an actual sneeze. Steph bravely supplied the latter by selflessly standing with a dictaphone and throwing pepper in her own face. The others required some creative thinking and alternatives (no, we don't have a bath tub).

We had a few Star Wars costumes hanging around from a fancy dress evening and thought it'd be fun to put them on and play around. So we quickly knocked up a story, recruited some animal extras and built some props.

Steph and Craig filming the opening sequence with a home-made Tie fighter.

 There was loads of snow over the weekend and with temperatures below -5C we were well wrapped up, usually with costumes over the top. The wind has now changed direction and just four days later it's back up to summer temperatures of 4C.

Gingerbread Star Wars characters.

Friday evening was spent writing the script and putting together costumes. Then on Saturday we got up early, got dressed up and started running round like fools. By the evening we were done with our filming and moved to the arduous task of editing. This took up most of the following day too, with everyone getting involved with certain scenes, but by tea time on Sunday we were done. One group viewing on the big screen and I started uploading it to the competition site.

Click here to watch it.

I think you can see how much fun we had making it by the barely suppressed grins and giggles. A good number of blooper scenes made it into the final edit and, despite how many times I've seen certain scenes during the editing, there are bits that continue to make me laugh.

I hope you enjoy it too.


Jerry

Ice Ice Baby

We've had a taste of what Antarctic weather should be this week as strong winds blew up off the continent and brought us piles of snow and ice. We've had fun mashing through snowdrifts, skidding about on the frozen ponds and climbing the frozen streams. Here's a few photos:

The view from my bedroom window. Rather more obscured than usual.

The back of the base. Probably the snowiest and sunniest picture I'll ever get.

Ice forming on the sea and the jetty.

Frozen seaweed washed up on the shore.

Gentoo penguin stomping through the soft snow.
Watching the Gentoos in the snow is hilarious as they constantly act like they've never come across it before, always bending over to investigate a beak-full or slipping on the ice.

The Fur Seals are less confused although they seem to love rolling about in the snow. This one was just sleeping through a blizzard that ended up disguising him as a sheep.

The South Georgia Pipits are less at home in the snow, although they don't let it bother them. Small groups were patrolling the thin stretch of seaweed between the ice and the sea, looking for invertebrates. This one kept hopping onto floating bits of mushy ice and managed to find some food.

Leopard Seal on the edge of the open water and slushy sea ice. This was the Lep known as Maurice, who has been hanging around for a while. We were out on the jetty when he came to check us out.

A lovely big Leopard Seal 'hello' from Big Mo. He swam round us a few times, looking up, before playing with some seaweed and performing a bit of seal singing.

Jerry.