Bauer Bay

First off, I just want to say that I love Bauer Bay.

The hut is roomy, with big windows that face north to let in a lot of light. The front porch faces east to catch the sun for morning coffee al fresco, but the hut itself is tucked back in the dunes, protecting it from the west winds. The hut is dry inside (some of the huts, like Green Gorge, tend to be pretty damp) and easy to heat, which is big bonus. It is situated on the biggest sandy beach on the island that climbs to tussock-covered dunes to the east. The beach itself is composed of dark sand, and that coupled with the dunes almost reminds me of the Northern California beaches of my childhood. Also, because the beach is so big, the wildlife has plenty of room, so it is easy to get around without disrupting the residents. All good things.

I spent a lot of time at Bauer during my last field season, studying a big marine fault that runs across the island from Sandy Bay to Bauer and out to Langdon Point, so it feels a bit like home to me. I have been working out of Bauer since mid-December, bonding with my beloved "Finch-Langdon" fault, but also moving into the deeper units that were uplifted by this fault, mapping and sampling in the sheeted dikes, gabbro, gabbro mylonites, and peridotite. It is a nice change after my volcanic work- the intrusive rocks are not only aesthetically pleasing, they also have some really cool relationships that have gotten my brain thinking about great geological things.... ah, such wonderful geology! Each day started with a big hour long walk from Bauer to Langdon Bay across the featherbed, which is a Macquarie Island specialty- a layer of vegetation that floats over a layer of liquid peat, so each step sinks a centimeter or two with water swirling around the boot, occasionally breaking through to the knee or deeper. Featherbed is found primarily on a broad wave-cut platform that curves around much of the northwest coast, so when one says "I am walking to Bauer via the featherbed," they mean that they are going around the coast instead of over the top. Luckily, it has been impossibly dry lately, so I had a pretty smooth walk each day with no break-throughs, thinking and planning, solving the world's problems, pulling 10 hour days in the beautiful weather. (Nathan and I keep trying to explain to people what it was like in '99- "It rained EVERY DAY! You had to shout over the wind! We spent half our time hiding from the SNOW!" but they just think we are wimps. Don't those of you who were with me last time remember? My sad e-mails about losing weeks to the weather? If only they had been there....)

I had some great visitors while I was at Bauer as well- first Sam and later Rachael, both albatross biologists, each taking a shift away from their home on Hurd Point while they band the northern giant petrel chicks around Bauer. I also spent some time with Robb, our station leader. He was out for his monthly trip- collects debris that washes up on Davis Point and Bauer Bay for a study being done at the University of Tasmania- a job traditionally given to the station leader, sort of as an excuse to get them off station every now and again. Robb really embraces these trips- while other station leaders might only be out for a few days, Robb turns his into 10 day extravaganzas, visiting all of the scientists in the field, helping them out if they need it, which we often do. He field-assisted me for two days, helping me carry out most of Langdon Bay. I have never met anyone who can carry as much as he! I had trouble just lifting his pack! Exactly what you want in a field assistant! And he even asked lots of questions not only about the geology of Macca, but in geology in general, which is always fun.

The wanderer

One morning, I walked out to the porch to see Sam standing on the edge, scanning the raised featherbed platform to the north through binoculars. "Wha'cha looking at, Sambo?" I asked. He lowered his binoculars and turned his smiley eyes toward me (Sam has the smiley-est eyes I have ever seen...) "Ah, Karah," he said, greeting me, "I'm looking at a big white bird."

Macquarie Island is home to four species of albatross, one of which is the mighty wandering albatross, arguably the world's largest flying bird weighing in at 7 kilos with a 3.5 meter wingspan. The wandering albatross population is in decline world-wide, and this decline is glaringly apparent on Macquarie Island. Macca isn't really a wandering albatross island - there are other places, like the aptly named Bird Island or South Georgia Island where there are thousands of breeding pairs- we only are home to about 70 individuals or so. So, when some of them don't return, their absence is rather obvious. They are hit the hardest by long-line fishing, the technique used to catch Patagonian toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass), blue-fin tuna, swordfish, among others. The lines are dropped behind the boats with hundreds of baited hooks, the bird goes for the bait, the lines go down, along with the bird.

The vast majority of the our wanderers hang out on the southern end of the island in what is known as the Caroline Exclusion zone- an area closed to everyone except for the albatross biologists during the albatross breeding season, from November to April. This area is also the only place where the black-browed and grey-headed albatross breed, although the fourth and smallest, the light-mantled sooty albatross nests all over the island. (but though it is the smallest, it has the reputation, as Rach says, of being "the most extreme bird- they live longer, breed more often, forage farther than any other albatross.") Most of the wanderers are found in the south, but there are a few stragglers that have set up camp on the featherbed on the north end of the island- only a few now, but in the 70's there were as many as 30 pairs, to give you an idea of the type of decline we are experiencing.

The wanderer is an extremely long-lived bird, late to breed and like our seals, very philopatric. In addition, they pair for life. A wanderer reaches sexual maturity at around 9 to 11 years old. At this time, they search for a mate with which they enter into elaborate courtship. That first season, the birds will flirt with each other with a majestic display of wing extension and bill clacking, and they may build a nest. This first nest is sometimes called a "play nest" because the birds don't actually do anything with it- they just build it and hang out around it. Then they go to sea to forage for the winter. The following spring, if all goes well, they will reunite at the play nest. If one doesn't come back, the other must start all over again, or if the nest was destroyed, they have to build another one, which sets everything back. A good pair of birds that has good luck may produce an egg this year. But chances are very slim that it will actually hatch- the parents will leave it too long, or some other disaster will usually befall the egg due to their inexperience. So the winter arrives, and they depart, hopefully reuniting the next summer at their nest. This year, they stand a good chance of hatching their egg, but it is rare for the chick to actually fledge, again because they birds don't quite have the knack of parenting, and may not return often enough to feed the chick or whatever. But it is the fourth summer together when they stand a good chance of getting it all right- the nest, the egg and the rearing. The egg is incubated for 70 days, and the chick takes almost a year to fledge, so the birds only breed every other year. But a good pair of birds has as much as 30 breeding years in them, so one individual could produce 15 offspring- not too bad, really.

So, the big white bird that Sam was eyeing was one of these few wanderers that return to the featherbed- a tiny white spot in a field of green to my eyes. "He's has bred successfully before," Sam told me, returning his eyes to his binoculars, "but for the last three years he has returned, alone. His girly seems to be missing- dead probably, probably long lines. Hopefully he'll move on south to Caroline where there are other girls to meet." But this isn't very likely- a sad by-product of the wanderer's fidelity. There were 3 pairs that fledged chicks from the featherbed last year, but this year there is only one pair that may still lay an egg, one pair that has been spotted (but they seem to be in the process of moving house so they probably won't get organized enough to lay this year,) and our poor widower. But regardless, even though there are so few animals, the featherbed track that runs around Handspike Point to Bauer has been closed to jolly trips, although people, like me, who have work to do there are allowed in, provided they avoid the sensitive birds.

Close Encounter of the Feathery Kind

A few days later I was walking along the featherbed one morning, deep in my thoughts on my way to Langdon Bay. I had been walking for about a half an hour, and was getting into the rhythm of the walk, and in fact, was planning what I was going to write to you about the albatross from the stories Sam had told me. Suddenly, my reverie was broken by a loud "whump" on the track behind me. I turned around, and there, face to face, two meters away, was the animal that had just been in my thoughts, the biggest bird I had ever seen. I stood there for a moment, stunned, hardly believing what I was seeing. I dropped to my knees, and fumbled around opening my backpack, extricating my camera from the tool belt/notebook/lunch jumble inside, trying to move quickly but quietly so as to not scare him off. Flight seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind. He lay down on the track, turning his head from side to side as he examined me and I examined him, taking photos at a hundred miles an hour. Then, he decided to come in for a closer look- spreading his incredible wings wide, he flapped them in my direction, twice, then began to approach me with a loud clacking of his bill, almost like he was courting me! I backed away into the stilbocarpa, while he inspected by backpack, dwarfing my pack with his heavy body, plucking at the straps (in the photo, this is a 70 liter pack, like you would take on multiple day pack-packing trip...pretty big bird, huh?) He then turned to me again, tucked as I was in the vegetation, and approached me, stretching his slender neck high and throwing his head back with a great clatter of the bill. He finally settled down, preening and poking in the grass in an absent-minded way. We sat there, watching each other, for a half an hour.

When I returned back along the track at the end of the day, he was gone, but Rach had arrived at Bauer, relieving Sam of his petrel-banding duty. The northern giant petrel is also in decline and their population is monitored by banding the chicks around Bauer- a difficult, smelly job that Rach and Sam are splitting between their albatross work. I was overflowing with excitement when I pushed my digital camera into Rach's hands, explaining to her about my encounter. She flipped through the pictures studying the plumage. "Hmm," she said, "That looks like number 50. She's (I was wrong in thinking that it was male!) a 30-something year old bird, and has buzzed a couple of people on the featherbed before. When she was a chick on the featherbed back in the 70's, she was handled a lot, weighed and measured all the time by every man and his brother passing through," she joked, "which is something we try to avoid these days. Anyway, she sort of seems to be habituated to people." News which still didn't diminish my excitement at being one of the lucky few!

All day long, I had kept thinking about this encounter, replaying the scene. Wishing I had stayed longer, so that I could have seen the bird in flight. It is hard to explain how one feels about these magical animal encounters that are a part of everyday life here. There are different levels- walking past a group of royal penguins hanging out on the beach vs. watching a newly hatched penguin chick being fed, for instance. Or stepping over a weaner on your doorstep vs. witnessing the birth of a pup. Some are commonplace, others somehow elevated, you know? And the wanderer encounter is high up there- like people were talking about it on the station when I got back from the field "G'day Karah! How're you goin'? I heard you had a wanderer experience!" Things like that. Life is pretty simple here, I guess! Like living in the Discovery Channel.

I'm back now, for about a week, leaving for Waterfall Bay after Australia Day. Let me know how y'all are doing!

take care-

Karah