Giant Petrel Chicks

Winter is steady setting in, the sun doesn't come up until I've been at work for a couple hours and it sets at dinner. 

I got to go out with the volunteer birding team that is doing the bird work for the bird science group while they are not here to check on the progress that the Giant Petrel chicks were making. They are almost ready to fledged and are awkwardly loosing all their down.

 Their down kind of smells like dryer sheets, it's weird.

 About one in thirty giant petrels is white. Their down is white as well so this one is a little harder to tell that it is a chick.

 Stretching the wings.

An adult Giant Petrel, these are the largest birds in the petrel family. They are huge, one might even go so far as to call them giant.

 My hand next to one of their foot prints.

 This lady petrel was very curious and walked up to me and stuck her head in my camera lens!

Sun Rises and Leopard Seal Feeding

 The late sunrises mean I'm already at work when the sun comes up over the glacier.

 When the weather is good it is pretty spectacular to watch.

 A few weeks ago a leopard seal attacked and killed a crab eater seal and spent the whole day eating it in the inlet next to station.

 I didn't see the action, just the feeding and the kelp gull frenzy. Here is a juvenile in the water and the smarter adult up above. The juvenile was lucky and didn't get chomped.

 

 More sunrises!

Sun after the Storm

 We had a week and a half long wind and rain storm and had not seen the sun in about a week. Then the sun came out for a rare rainbow appearance!

 Double rainbow!

 First clear day in a over a week. The sun is going down earlier and earlier now. We have about nine hours of day light now.

 Pretty clouds!

Pretty light!