We've had an excellent week down here at Cape Shirreff. My birthday on the 3rd was one of the most beautiful days we've had so far - calm, sunny, & full of activity. I spent about 4 hours on the beach doing penguin band resights, watching groups of penguins come leaping or "porpoising" out of the water after a day at sea, then preening themselves on shore. They are so amazing to watch when they swim. The parents then waddle up to the colony with full bellies, call to their chicks & the chase begins. It's one of the most entertaining spectacles in the natural world - chicks running down their parents for food (does this seem familiar to those of you with kids when you come home from a trip?) Right now the non-breeding adult penguins are in the midst of their molt. It's a terrible time for the birds. They are very vulnerable & their flippers (normally used for defense; strong enough to break a skua's wing) are engorged with blood, soft & useless. They will sit patiently facing a rock for 3 weeks until their new feathers grow in. The penguin chicks are also molting from their fluffy down to adult plumage. They look like little punk rockers with mohawks & other tufts of down remaining. Soon they'll all look like miniature adults. The seal pups are molting from their dark puppy fur into sleek silver adult coats. They look beautiful & now they can devote all of their resources to getting fat instead of thermoregulating. They are getting pretty good at swimming & they truly own the cape right now, scurrying around in gangs, chasing penguins, terrorizing chicks, & romping on our doorstep. They're still very cute & make me laugh as they chase me down the beach. On the evening of my birthday I had the good fortune of watching a leopard seal hunt & catch a pup, then devour it. It was fascinating to watch him eat, throwing the small carcass in the air to tear it up while flocks of Wilson's storm petrels tried to steal small pieces of meat. Leopard seals are amazing aquatic predators. So good, in fact, that we think one munched one of our birds wearing a $2000 satellite transmitter. His signal hasn't been transmitting & we haven't seen him come to feed his chicks in over a week. At this stage in the game the chicks are old enough that they will probably survive to fledge even with just one parent. My birthday party was great. We barbequed pork chops on the deck. Layla & Rodrigo made a delicious dinner & cake & I got some excellent presents - store-bought, homemade & favors (breakfast in bed, a massage). It's the best birthday I've had in a while. People down here are great - all 8 of them. We lost our camp leader, Mike, this week. He went back to California. Very sad because he was our best chef & had an excellent sense of humor. We have exactly 1 month left down here. Today we are doing a chinstrap chick census - counting thousands of chicks. We still have a few more days of diet sampling, the big chick banding fiasco (invariably on the wettest, muddiest day of the year), & a bit more skua work. The busy summer cycle of life will start winding down. Enjoy the end of winter up north.

Lots of love, Iris