There's a bird and penguin eggs, yum.

There's a tussac bird that appears to have syncronized with Christophers alarm clock.  The alarm clock goes off at 5 am and the bird goes off at 5.05 am.  This wouldn't be so bad if you could turn him off like the alarm clock but I timed him yesterday and he chirpped and cheeped for a full 20 minutes.  To try and control the annoyance that boils up inside me at this interpution to my sleep I even tried putting words from an ABBA song to his so called singing.  It didnt work.  I have moments of shoot him, please Christopher go and shoot him, but he is rare, so they say. I put up with him last summer but my tolerance is running out, the only solution I can see is to move islands.

Gentoo penguin rookeries in the sand grass on Speedwell Island

King shags

On happier things the gentoo penguins have laid.   There are thousands of them all looking fit and healthy. They have set up an alliance with the shags.  I'm not sure who is benifiting, I can't see who has anything to gain by it but the shags have started laying in the centre of the penguin rookeries.  Last year there was an island wide penguin census by Falkland Conservation.  We opted to count our own penguins.  Never again. I believe it is near impossible to get an anywhere near accurate count off the large colonies that have several thousand penguins interscepted with several thousand shags.  I think a new method will need to be investigated for the next census, maybe aerial photos.  We have collected eggs from one colony.  We will pickle some for ourselves and also give some to our families in Stanley.  This will have no detrimental affect on the penguins, they were robbed immediately after their first laying and like a hen they will lay again.  Although we eat penguin eggs we are both conservation minded and the penguins will not be disturbed again this season.