Week 3 Ascension!

Week 3: Monday: LetterBox 21st November On Monday morning Anna and I helped out with the vehicle checks and then headed out with Sophie to conduct seabird monitoring surveys at the islands endemic Ascension Frigate bird colonies which are situated on an area of the island called the Letterbox peninsula. Both masked bobbies and brown boobies also nest on letterbox but more to the left, and we were carrying out frigate bird monitoring so we kept mostly to the right of the where we monitored three colonies. The track road down to letterbox looked a bit scary to drive down, luckily Sophie is very experienced at driving it, but along the track masked boobies were nesting all over the track and she had to maneourve around them, at one point there were two quite close to eachother and Anna and I had to get out and guide her through the middle of them, I’m not sure how she made it through but the bobbies don’t move when they’re on their eggs so they just kind of made honking noises at her but didn’t move out of the way. The masked bobbies nest doesn’t have any nesting material, its just a circle of guano that they make and sit inside. The brown boobies do collect some material which they sit on and the MPA plastic coordinator Toby is about to start surveys to see if they’re collecting much plastic in their nest materials. Our focus of the day was on the Frigate birds, Ascension frigate birds are endemic to Ascension which means they’re not found anywhere else in the world. They’re amazing birds to see up close, they filled the sky around letterbox and have a very distinct wing shape which makes them look like dinosaurs in the sky. Its currently at the tail end of the breeding season and most of the colonies have chicks, some have fledged but there were still some on eggs and some still pairing up ready to lay. The male frigate birds have a large red balloon under their beaks which they use to attract females and looses its shape at the end of the season but there were still some males that had very inflated balloons and were trying to woo the females. The chicks were very cute and fluffy. We hiked from the car to the first colony which was F colony and Sophie showed us how the monitoring works – she takes photos of the colony from as close as possible and from the same angle as before (this is done every two weeks) and we then went through the nest sheet from the week before, each frigate nest is given a number which is tied to a stone and placed near the bird/nest. We checked the previous photo to the current birds sitting in front of us and went through each nest that had been previously marked and noted whether it was still there, whether there was an adult male or female there, whether they were on an egg or a chick (stage noted) if there was just a chick and no adult and what stage it was (naked chick under adult, or D1, D2, D3, D4 or older – depending on size and amount and type of feathers) we also noted if any nests had failed and no longer there and any new birds that weren’t there previously and made nest stones for them. Sophie then checked which of the D3/4 chicks hadn’t been microchipped and went and got one and showed Anna and I how to handle them. I sat on the floor with my leg out and we placed the chick on my leg whilst I held its wings down firmly but not too hard and covered its eyes to calm it down a bit whilst Sophie microchipped that back of its neck area. The chick was then returned to its nest spot and we repeated this for two more chicks. We then headed to B colony and Anna had a go at holding the chicks. After our lunch break we then headed to C colony and repeated the process again before heading back to the office for the end of the day.

Tuesday: 22nd November Today Anna and I were weeding Long beach, removing invasive plants from the sand. The RMS Discovery also arrived back at Ascension and some of the crew came on island to give a talk to islanders about what they had found and the research they were doing in the Ascension MPA before heading onto St Helena waters to carry on the research expedition. Anna and I were allowed an extended break to go to the talk, it was really interesting to hear about the deep sea samples they had collected of different fish, cephalopods and water samples, as well as see some of the underwater footage and mapping they had done whilst out at sea. After lunch Anna and I carried on weeding the beach for the afternoon and then made our way to the dump by ourselves – we got a little lost on the way but soon found the right road and it helped us get our bearings a little more. 

Wednesday 23rd November: I had an office day and spent the morning writing a nature note article on the black rat which is non native and created posters for safely observing turtles at night.

Thursday 24th November – Anna and I spent the day with Chrisna at Mars Bay cutting down Mexican thorn. It was also the first time I drove one of the landrovers! I drove us from the conservation office to Mars Bay and back after. The landrover isn’t as hard to drive as I thought it would be, some of the gears are a little hard to find but I quite liked being high up and could see a lot more than I thought I’d be able to. In the evening we made homemade pizza and had a movie night with Ed and watched what we did on our holiday. 

Friday 25th November – Anna and I were split again – she went to green mountain to do strawberry guava control and I went with Sophie to do the rat baiting at mars bay and then the turbine checks and luckily we didn’t find any dead birds this time, another day of me driving which was nice to practice. In the afternoon I finished some posters I had been designing for the upcoming sea turtle season about how to safely observe sea turtles around Ascension, and after that I went and weeded pier head beach. We went to VC (Volcano Club on the US base) for dinner with Ed, Mel, Lorna, Chrisna, Sunitha, Emily and met Austin, Caleb and Josh. I had a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner with fries and shared mozzarella sticks and fried mushrooms with Anna, after dinner we played beer pong and fuseball which was good fun.

Saturday 26th November – Anna and I went to the shops in town in the morning to get some supplies and then went for a walk to comfortless cove and met Lorna, Emily, Mel and Sunitha who had driven – we borrowed their snorkels and snorkelled in the cove and saw the triggerfish up close which was really nice. We took some snacks with us for lunch and then headed back walking back to Chinatown for the afternoon.  

Sunday 27th November – Anna and I made pancakes for breakfast – a weekend tradition and then had a chilled morning, she went to the office to call family and I read my kindle and chilled at the bungalow. We then did some yoga in the afternoon and went and explored the Georgetown seawater swimming pool which is quite close to our house and free to use, we had a swim and then returned to the house.