Our first pup

Yesterday I was wandering the island doing a bird count, when I got a call on the radio saying that a pup had been born! I obviously went and had a look at the ugly / cute fur ball.

The cow doesn't seem experienced (she isn't tagged so we can't say for sure) as she isn't rolling over when the pup attempts to suckle her side though. She is also more concerned with gulls behind her than Andre who decided to put the pup's rear flippers in his mouth... We shall see how she does though.

 We have been having a week of rough seas, and our food shipment which was meant to arrive on Saturday was delayed until Monday, meaning that RJ left later, and Shaun was delayed coming onto the island. The landing was in the worst conditions RJ has seen over two seasons, and there were a few hairy moments, but we got all of our supplies and personnel transferred with only an island radio lost in the process. I didn't take any photos of the landing as I was too busy holding bow lines to stop the zodiac pitching into the gulch as swells hit it, but follows some photos of a selection of island occurrences.

Brown Pelican with a wave breaking close behind

A variety of age class males piled on top of each other

Andre staring at me

An oiled common murre found on the island. I watched as he preened himself on a rock, got blown off by the wind, struggled and failed to fly, and was washed up into a gulch with elephant seals snapping at him. He managed to hop up above them unharmed.

To celebrate our first pup of the season, we headed down to watch a rare sunset from the colony, and as we clinked our beer bottles together, a grey whale spouted off-shore. It was perfectly timed.

The majority of the elephant seals are constantly dribbling snot, probably from infections after being at sea.

Finally captured a few photos of the banded burrowing owl. He usually gets flushed from his burrow as we walk past and quickly disappears, but this time he stayed around in the open.

I debated whether to post the following few images as they are gory, but I thought I should include all aspects of science. A young californian sea lion died yesterday morning in our elephant seal colony, and so we carried her higher up the beach and Ryan performed a field necropsy. Although there wasn't anything that interesting about this individual, he went into great detail as we are to help on future operations. Warning, blood and guts are literally in the following images (after the one of pelicans with the moon in the background, silhouetted by a sunset).

Pre-necropsy

Fully opened up

Intestines and stomach laid out to check their contents (there wasn't much in the stomach, but a bit of faecal matter towards the bottom of the system).

 We aren't sure of the cause of death, probably some form of illness that led to it not eating. Cancer is common in this species, but as such a young individual and the lack of physical evidence suggests that wasn't it. When you live on an island with so many animals, you become used to death and stepping over dead birds (after clipping their wings to show that they have already been counted), but there is so much life here a few deaths are unavoidable. The common murre colony for example is in full force. They will come and go, and it is clear that they are here when you walk out of the house in the morning to see a "murre-nado" circling.

Common murre colony, taken from the top of lighthouse hill.

 As we are experiencing very low (negative) tides at the moment, we managed to explore 'jewel cave', which is usually flooded with water. It was very slippery on matts of algae, although i'm becoming better at climbing rock faces from daily activities around the island, so the added challenge was overcome without incident. The cave was small, but full of colour.