#seabird science

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Antipodean Summer 1

I’m writing this sitting outside the hut on Antipodes Island, 870km southeast of New Zealand. The fact that I can write and post blogs from here is a bit startling, and it shows how much the world has changed since my last forays into the subantarctic. I am here for three months, December to March, to assist with Antipodean Albatross research. Working in the subantarctic has been a dream for me…

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Spring

Spring updates!

The days are getting longer. The weather is a mercurial mix of thunderstorms and sunshine, and trees like kōwhai and karo are heaving out flowers. The tūī are loving it. Every day I hear more riroriro singing, even in the middle of Auckland city at the university campus.

Tūī in introduced coral tree

I spend a few days on Te Hauturu-o-Toi (Little Barrier Island) and Mauimua/Motumuka…

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Rangitāhua - Kermadec islands Part I

The Kermadec adventure - seabirds, flying fish (and squid?!), and more!

What I’d like to tickle your fancy with today is an adventure I had well over a year ago now! Once I’d finished my Master’s thesis (blogging the whole way!), I decided to take a break from the internet. This was mainly because I was about to embark on a few months of solid fieldwork with very little internet access, but also because after writing a thesis, I was very done with writing. Which I…

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2019: The year so far

It's almost May, so here's what I've been up to for the past few months!

It’s nearly May! I don’t know where this year is sneaking off to, but it’s going pretty fast. I thought I’d pull together a few photos to illustrate what I’ve been getting up to so far – spoiler alert, it’s mainly seabird fieldwork.

In January I helped out with a project on Australasian gannets– dietary and GPS tracking studies. This was awesome fun, very hot, and I came away with lots of…

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Ōi

The end of another chapter..

These are my birds. Grey-faced petrels have been my birds since my Master’s project was decided on two years ago.

I say my birds. I don’t own them. I feel no sense of ownership of them. If anything, I feel empathy and protectiveness. The first Grey-faced petrel I held was the same age as I was – 23 years old. That’s one hell of an achievement for a bird, but seabirds are remarkably long-lived.…

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Gratitudes

A few thoughts, because there's not much room in my head at the moment. I hand my thesis in on Tuesday!

I am standing on a knife edge. The sea breathes below, hushing into narrow inlets through tumbled stone and washing quietly against steep cliffs. The breeze is gentle, a welcome relief from the heat of walking while kitted up for a night in the open, exposed in the dark. Soft, golden light is pouring across the wide sky, slanting along the rock-faces and glittering off the ocean surface.

As a…

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An overwhelming amount of cute

Or - why seabird conservation is worthwhile.

I feel extremely lucky to do the work I do and share the lives of some really special birds. I was drawn to seabirds for their mastery of the pelagic world. They are birds that few people get to see, living most of their lives out on the ocean. In Auckland we are lucky to have so many surrounding us in the Hauraki Gulf, breeding on islands and pockets of the mainland that are well enough…

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Burrowscoping

A little bit of seabirds, science, and conservation

Seabird science is glamorous. I spend a lot of time lying down, face-first in the mud, with my arm in a hole in the ground. Like so:

At the moment, these holes in the ground sometimes have Grey-faced petrel chicks in them.

And while the old ‘shove your arm in and find out’ method often works, there are also burrows where it’s difficult to know what’s going  on. They can be long. They can twist in…

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