Spring is definitely in the air at Macca. We are experiencing warmer days around six to seven degrees Celsius, and a little more blue sky and less wind. Monday morning this week was a stunner and got the photographers out to catch beautiful views of the plateau from station.
The wildlife populations on the beaches are exploding. The elephant seal harems are increasing in size exponentially before our eyes with plentiful pups arriving. The total number of breeding animals on the beaches on both sides of the isthmus alone is now up around a thousand. Meg and Evelyn are assisting the rangers by doing weekly counts of the isthmus beaches, and later this month many of us will be involved in an all-island census count. The pups are weaned at around a month of age, and so the first pups born in the first week of this month will be little rolling fat weaners soon.
The king penguins which weren’t already rearing a chick through the winter have returned to moult and commence breeding very soon for this year. The first of the royal penguins, which all spend the winter out to sea, have returned to their huge colony areas at Sandy Bay and The Nuggets, to commence breeding. The gentoo penguins are already nesting and on eggs — they will have chicks in a few weeks now. We are awaiting the rockhopper penguins and sooty albatross, which won’t be long. An interesting avian inhabitant of the island is the self introduced redpoll finch, and these are now nesting in the tussocks. These little finches were deliberately introduced from Europe to New Zealand and then blown by storms across to Macca. They are very shy and notoriously difficult to photograph.