Hi again.
The weather is wet & rainy down here on Cape Shirreff making it a perfect morning for a hot mug of tea & e-mail writing. Slogging through the muddy colonies & picking up soggy chicks is far from pleasant. Their odor clings to your skin for days even with vigorous washing. The penguin chicks have started to crèche, so they now hang out in groups while both parents go out to forage. Adults don't know their chicks, but chicks recognize their parent's voice. Of course all chicks are out to get as much food as they can so the adults run from the chicks. Generally only the correct chicks pursue their parents. The colonies are in chaos now; nests have been abandoned, chicks are running everywhere. Apparently when they get bigger they can run right on top of their parents' backs trying to get food. In the next week the AMLR research vessel will be off-shore doing an oceanographic survey (measuring krill quantities & other factors) so we will be putting more instruments on penguins to coincide with that. We have time-depth recorders which monitor the foraging depths of the birds & trip durations. We also will deploy some more satellite-linked transmitters to track the birds foraging locations. The seal biologists do the same & later use the data from the research ship to get a more complete picture on where the animals are feeding & why. The sealers have also started putting flipper tags on pups. They'll do 500 total which they then track over subsequent years as known age animals. We do the same with penguins, but we'll band a total of 1200 chicks. The skua chicks are growing fast. They are now at a very ugly & awkward age. We'll put leg bands on them this week. The penguins get flipper bands. Not much else new is happening here - bad weather, wet birds, cold winds, but overall life is still wonderful here. That's all for now. Time to head out to work. We've got some more gentoo diet sampling to do today. Take care.

Love, Iris