I've had a lovely long email from Phil - thank you! - telling me all about the Christmas un-Bakerstead weekend. It sounded great - but I'm sure you didn't really have any fun without me! I find myself often thinking about cycling up the Duddon for some reason! finishing with a pint or two in Broughton. We have again had a couple of not so busy days which gives too much time for thinking, which is not always a good thing. A couple of ships changed their plans and we didn't have the visits we expected.
But now everything is hectic again - two ships a day, plus yesterday the Nordnorge brought us a two-man film crew. They have been commissioned by the Antarctic Heritage Trust to make an information film to show passengers on the larger ships before they get here. We can't always go on board, the bigger ships often don't have a lecture theatre big enough for all of the passengers, and they also have several languages on board. We had a wonderful visit from Polar Star this morning, with a number of British aboard and there were some great comments and activities being filmed, with our visitors being very cooperative. The film crew are only here for 2 days and they leave again on Friday.
The snow is beginning to melt, and the rocks are emerging. Every day we find a new artefact (new to me anyway). The whale bones, the sledges, various other bits of machinery, graffiti (the date 1921 carved into the rocks) - even the mooring chains at the landing site, which are left over from the whaling days too, are only just starting to appear. It's hard to imagine what it will look like when the snow has completely gone. I don't know how deep it is! Rick says the path from the landing site is still well buried. The visitors are walking up to the hut on old snow, and this melts during the day under pressure of the footfall, and then freezes into an ice rink at night. I was out at 8.30 this morning with an ice axe bashing the surface to rough it up a bit to make it safer.
I believe that there are now new pictures visible on this page! I haven't seen them, in fact I don't even know what they are of. They were selected by Tudor who took some of mine home on his laptop. My brother says that they are all blue sky and crisp snow - hmmm, I wouldn't call that representative. I may try and get a couple of blizzard shots up there too! The penguins seem to be doing well at the moment, they are about 2 weeks behind last year however due to the lingering snow. Many of them have three eggs, which is unusual. They can't really incubate three, and we see them turning round and round trying to fit them all in. It may be because the first ones were laid some time ago and the weather was so cold and wet since then they have assumed that the first egg is addled and have started again. However they don't have the wit to push out the old ones and sometimes it is the new ones that are left out in the cold. It's amazing the eggs are ever warm enough to hatch, as th
e birds are constantly on their feet defending their stony nests from marauders! We saw one poor penguin just outside our front door trying to chase off two robbing penguins coming at her from different sides - and while she was occupied one of her eggs rolled out behind her and was eaten by a sheathbill. There are pieces of egg and splashes of yolk all over the island now - the skuas are around all the time. The penguins make a terrible hoarse wailing noise whenever a skua lands nearby or flies overhead - it sounds desperate. But the skua babies have to eat too I suppose.
Enough from me for now - better go and check the shop is ship shape, but I think we are ready for the fray!
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