You Big Softy!

Apologies for the wait for these latest instalments from Gough. It appears January isn’t a good month for internet out here!

We also apologise for this terrible title. The blog today is about our Soft-plumaged Petrels so if you can think of a better pun for the title please leave a comment. Clearly today isn’t a day for eloquence.

But first thing's first - we mentioned in the blog at the start of the month that our prions would soon be hatching. So here are a few photos of our adorable chicks from Prion Cave yesterday……

Little.... (David Kinchin-Smith)

....And large (David Kinchin-Smith)

One proud parent (David Kinchin-Smith)

The prions never fare particularly well on Gough but more chicks have hatched than we were expecting so it bodes well for the rest of the season.

So over to a new species for the blog and another stunner, the Soft-plumaged Petrel. We were followed by ‘Softies’ for most of the voyage out to Gough, and they have one of the most exuberant flight styles of any of the petrels, looping all over the place rather erratically! Like many of the burrow nesters on the island, softies return to the island after dark to avoid predation. And it is the whistles and wails from them and our Great Shearwaters which serenade us each night.

One smart petrel! (David Kinchin-Smith)

They are a relatively small petrel and as such have smaller burrow entrances which can be quite difficult to find. Eggs are laid between November and December and should be hatching any time now. However, from our monitored burrows, all birds are still on eggs so I’m afraid there aren’t any pictures of chicks just yet. Once the chick hatches it is brooded for around the first week. It is then fed by both adults until it fledges at around 3 months old.

One of our incubating adults (David Kinchin-Smith)

A sneak peak of the egg (David Kinchin-Smith)

We will keep you posted of the progress of our softies. With an estimated 400,000 pairs on Gough you can imagine the racket each night! And by racket, I mean the best lullaby ever!

David

Signed, SEALed, Delivered...

Apologies for the long gap in our posts, it's been a hectic few weeks here on the island. We've had visitors!! A National Geographic expedition to research and film on all four islands in the Tristan group came to Gough last week, so we've been busy showing them as much of the incredible wildlife here as possible before they had to leave to head back north to Tristan da Cunha. It was so nice to see new faces, and to be able to show our lovely island and all of its inhabitants off!

It’s not just birds that come to Gough to breed; we also share the island with Subantarctic Fur Seals. Our beaches are currently swarming with dense colonies of seals, whose pups are around 35 days old at the moment. The larger males have been around since October and have been fighting to maintain their territories and gather their harems. They will head back to sea around the end of January, by which time the females will have given birth to their pups and will be pregnant again.  These colonies are noisy, smelly places, with about 300,000 seals spread across the island. In fact, Gough holds around 80% of the population of the species.

Our beaches are full of adult Fur Seals at the moment (Em Witcutt)

Recently we headed down to the beaches to weigh 100 of the very sweet pups. They weigh about 6kg when they are first born, and put on weight very quickly so are currently around 9kg. We’ll return at set intervals throughout the year to reweigh the growing pups and check on their progress. They will remain on the beaches for around 10 months, after which they will head out to sea and not return for at least 4 years. 

Nahhhhhh, little cuties (Em Witcutt)

A curious pup coming to investigate at lunch time (Em Witcutt)

More soon...

Em

Mysterious Cave Dwellers

Seabirds living in caves? Surely not!

Prions nest all over Gough, from burrows to rocky crevices, and the main study colony just so happens to be in a cave. These delightful birds are one of the most numerous on Gough and there may be some two million pairs on the island!

Outside the cave.....(David Kinchin-Smith)

......and inside (David Kinchin-Smith)

Prions are a small, blue-grey petrel with a fairly remarkable bill. Known as ‘Whalebirds’, a combination of filtering lamellae and an expandable gular pouch in their broad bills means that these birds are able to filter feed like, as Ryan et al. (2007) aptly puts it, “a tiny baleen whale”.

Until very recently, Broad-billed Prions were thought to be the only breeding prion species on Gough. However, research by Ryan et al. (2014) over the course of a few years revealed evidence for two separate prion species on Gough. The prions breeding in the main study colony of Prion Cave were shown to be significantly smaller billed and bred some three months later than those elsewhere on the island. The Prion Cave birds are more similar in size and their timing of breeding to Macgillivray’s prions, a species found on Amsterdam and St Paul islands in the temperate Indian Ocean. There is still so much waiting to be discovered on the island, and our prions are just one of Gough’s many mysteries.

Magnificent Macgillivray's! (David Kinchin-Smith)

The closely related Broad-billed Prion (David Kinchin-Smith)

Each year, around 50 prion nests are monitored in the Cave. The first eggs were discovered in late November and we will hopefully be welcoming our first chicks over the next couple of weeks.

Pair-bonding at the start of the season (David Kinchin-Smith)

Followed by preparing the nest (David Kinchin-Smith)

And now incubating an egg! (David Kinchin-Smith)

David

Reference.

Ryan, P. G. et al. (2014) The occurrence of two bill morphs of prions Pachyptila vittata
on Gough Island. Polar Biol (2014) 37:727–735

Ryan, P. et al. (2007) Field Guide to the Animals and Plants of Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island