Eddies and filaments

Imagine you are standing on a rock at the edge of the sea, gazing out at the seemingly infinite expanse of ocean that stretches to the horizon. You are hungry, really really hungry. In fact, you haven't eaten for three weeks! Now, jump into that ocean and try find some food. Where would you go? How would you know where you are when you can no longer see land? It's a pretty mindblowing thought to think that there are millions of animals out there that do that all the time. Part of my PhD thesis involves trying to understand how macaroni and rockhopper penguins manage to find food during the resource-limited winter months. During this time they spend six consecutive months at sea, never returning to land.

Thanks to satellites and the work of organisations like Aviso, anybody can find out what the ocean was doing anywhere in the world at any given time. For instance, I wanted to find out whether macaroni and rockhopper penguins were using mesoscale eddies and/or submesoscale filaments. These oceanographic processes are known to aggregate and sustain elevated concentrations of zooplankton and fish, and thus act as important foraging areas for many marine predators. Nobody, however, has investigated whether crested penguins utilise these structures during the winter period. The graphic below shows the movements of a macaroni penguin in relation to sea level anomaly (SLA - eddies) and finite-size Lyapunov exponent (FSLE - submesoscale filaments). Notice how the penguin encounters the eddy on May 26th and only leaves on July 21st. That's nearly two months at the same eddy. Also take notice of how the penguin moves in relation to the filaments.

Retroflection

"Breathe one last time

Your wild breath into me

That I may not forget you,

that I may remember who I am."

- Barbara Fairhead

Veolia Images

In February I decided to try my luck and I entered a few images into the prestigious Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. I didn't expect much as the standard is very high, with professional photographers usually taking top honours. This year they received over 48,000 images from 98 countries so I was very surprised when I found out that three of mine had made it through to the final round of judging in May. Stoked!

The images that were selected aren't necessarily my favourites and this just highlights how subjective photography is. What constitutes a great image to one person is not necessarily a great image to another. That is probably the most beautiful thing about photography.

Here are my three images that made it through:

Category:

Creative visions

'This category is for conceptual pictures – original and surprising views of nature, whether figurative or abstract – which are judged purely on their artistic merits.'

Reflections of the Past and Present

Macaroni penguins

Eudyptes chrysolophus

are the largest avian consumers of marine resources in the Southern Ocean, but very often they themselves become the consumed. Life for a sub-Antarctic penguin is harsh. In the water they risk ending up in the menacing jaws of killer whales and fur seals, and on land they’re constantly harassed by skuas and giant petrels that rob them of their eggs and chicks and prey on the weak. As a researcher on Marion Island I got used to death really quickly because it was all around me; that’s just how the natural world revolves. Penguin colonies are littered with bones and many macaroni penguins even use them to build their nests. I tried to photograph the close relationship that macaroni penguins share with the dead but it always turned out too gruesome. I wanted to show it in a beautiful and subtle way.

The opportunity came on a wind-still and moody-skied day when I was walking along the edge of a colony and saw the reflections of passing penguins in a pond of bones; I knew it was perfect. The light was bad so I cranked up the ISO and narrowed the aperture to get a nice sharpness throughout the image. The macaronis stopped and stared at me across the pond scattered with the bony remnants of their past relatives. They soon gave up trying to figure me out and carried on up to their nests, most probably made up of some more bony remnants of past relatives.

Canon 550D + Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 @ 1/80 sec, f/18, ISO 800

Category:

Animals in their environment

'Images must convey a feeling of the relationship between an animal and the place where it lives, and have a great sense of atmosphere.'

The Amphitheatre

Marion Island is home to more than 250,000 breeding pairs of macaroni penguins, nearly 13,000 of which spend the summer months building nests, mating, incubating eggs and raising chicks on a terraced landscape on the South-west coast called The Amphitheatre. It’s quite a sight to see the winding terraces, jam-packed with penguins, spiralling up to a point some 70 metres above the beach where they haul out. The acoustics are also fantastic! I’ll leave it up to your imagination to dream up what kind of sound emanates from thousands of buzzing macaroni penguins gathered in The Amphitheatre. Such a spectacle!

Canon 550D + Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 @ 1/200 sec, f/11, ISO 400

Category:

Animal Portraits

'A good portrait reveals something about its subject beyond the obvious. Images may be either close-up or mid-range and should convey a sense of intimacy, personality and spirit – the very essence of the animal – in a fresh and imaginative way.'

The Rebreather

Southern elephant seal bulls

Mirounga leonina

are notorious for their violent battles, roaring burps and large, elephant-like proboscises. In a species that is one of the most sexually dimorphic animals on the planet, it is this proboscis and their large body size which distinguishes the bulls from the females. The proboscis amplifies the sound of burps used to intimidate other bulls, as well as functioning as a sort of rebreather, reabsorbing moisture from the animals’ exhalations via specialised cavities. This reabsorption is important during the mating season when a bull needs to retain body moisture as he doesn’t leave the beach for an entire three months due to the constant threat of other bulls sneaking ashore and mating with his females.

The elephant seal bull photographed here was taking some time out in a rock pool when a friend and I stumbled upon him. The water was a perfect mirror and it looked so dreamy that we whipped out our cameras. His eyes then opened and he exhaled, shattering the mirror's surface with bubbling splashes and ricocheting ripples. He took a breath in and then under the water his trunk went. His eyes closed and his reflection in the water gradually returned. We took turns photographing him from a low perspective as he repeated his cycle, unfazed by our presence; breathe in, close eyes, sleep, open eyes, breathe out. We got our pictures, but one can't help but wonder why he didn't just sleep with his head on a nearby rock out of the water? Conserving body moisture I suppose.

Canon 550D + Canon 100mm f/2.8 @ 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO 200

Winners and highly commended images will be announced in mid-May. Check out the insane images from last year at the Natural History Museum's

online gallery

.

Le petit manchot

As you may have guessed, the title is French, and manchot means penguin, but what does the word ‘penguin’ mean, and where does it come from? The intellect who gave me insight into this etymological mystery was the legendary David Attenborough. It was a dark, moody day and a light drizzle drifted playfully with the gusting squalls that moved alongside the cliffs. Every so often a stream of sunlight would break through the clouds and a rainbow would materialise over the wild seas. I was sitting next to my macaroni study colony and observing their ways whilst being audibly entertained by Sir David's intriguing stories. One particular story involved the now extinct Great Auk; a large flightless bird with a black back, white belly and upright posture, similar to the penguins we know today. Its distinctive features included a grooved bill, the sides of its neck and head were brown, and it had a large white patch in front of its eyes.

Like penguins, the Great Auk spent most of its year foraging at sea and returned to offshore islands in the Boreal summer to breed. As naval exploration began to radiate in the 16th and 17th centuries, encounters with these birds became increasingly common and by the beginning of the 19th century they had been hunted to extinction for their meat and feathers. During those times the Great Auk was known to sea-farers by another name - 'pengwyn'. It is of Celtic origin and when dissected composes of two welsh words; 'pen' meaning head and 'gwyn' meaning white. This may be an odd description for a bird whose head, apart from a white patch in front of the eyes, is predominantly brown or black, but there are further traits about the Great Auk which I have yet to mention. During the winter months these birds underwent a plumage change similar to that experienced by their relatives, the guillemot and the razorbill, in which their fore-neck, chin, and head feathers turned white. This must have made a significant impression on many a sailor, as the name spread throughout Europe.

When these sea-farers eventually ventured further South and encountered similar birds on sub-Antarctic Islands, the name 'pengwyn' was copied and pasted into log books and journals. Interestingly, over the ages the name stuck for those tuxedo-clad birds in the South, whereas those in the North were reclassified as auks, puffins, guillemots and razorbills. In some languages, the remnant of the Northern Hemisphere's 'pengwyn' still lingers in the French and Spanish words for Great Auk, which are 'Grand Pingouin' and 'Gran Pinguino', respectively.

Two hundred years after the extinction of the 'pengwyn' I've found myself amongst four species of their etymological descendents. Marion island is home to the king penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus, the gentoo penguin Pygoscelis papua, the macaroni penguin Eudyptes chrysolophus, and the southern rockhopper penguin Eudyptes chrysocome filholi. Regarding my MSc, I came to Marion to collect data on the foraging ecology and diving behaviour of the latter two, the crested penguins. Eudyptes is derived from Greek and means 'good diver', and chrysolophus and chrysocome mean 'with a golden crest' and 'with golden hair', respectively.

9th December:

"... My summer days at Funk have begun with a bang. Each sunny day tweaks my smile a little further up my cheeks and today is no exception. The kings are trumpeting on the beach, some incubating and some parading up and down in pairs. The maccie colony is radiating brays and testosterone; the males are incubating whilst the females are foraging at sea. I'm waiting for their eggs to hatch and for my three logger birds to return so I can oooh and aaah at their magnificent tracks and deep dives. The sky is a deep blue and the wind is calm; there's a little swell wrapping round from the South and the two-foot waves are clean and clear; a perfect day at the beach."

Over the past few summer months I've spent a vast amount of time at Funk Bay, my macaroni study colony, as well as at my rockhopper study colony near Whalebird Point, equipping birds with GPSs and TDRs and sitting, waiting, wishing for them to return. The GPSs record position (if they're at the surface) at a programmed interval and the TDRs record temperature and pressure, which in turn equates to depth and is used to analyse their diving behaviour.

Macaroni and rockhopper penguins live very similar lives. The only difference is that the rockhoppers arrive at Marion Island two to three weeks later than the macaronis. As a result, their breeding cycles differ by the same margin, which could be to reduce interspecific competition for resources.

The breeding, or chick-rearing, season of each species is divided into two stages; the brood-guard and the creche stage. During the brood-guard stage the female does all the foraging at sea whilst the male remains in the colony to brood/guard the chick, feeding only on his fat reserves. When the female returns from her foraging trip she takes over from the male and regurgitates a meal of krill for her little chick.

The brood-guard stage usually ends after 20-24 days, after which the chick is able to fend for itself. The chicks then stand together in creches while both parents head off into the deep blue to forage.

11th December:

"... I wanted to observe some nest dynamics so I marked a female that was on a chick by smearing strawberry jam on her back (I had run out of provitas to smear it onto). Later on I noticed that her partner was on the chick and that she had disappeared. I then saw her hopping down through the colony from the waterfall pond where she must have had a little drink of fresh water (as they surprisingly do). She and her partner had a greeting dance (flippers back, necks extended, heads up and waving from side to side whilst braying away) then hopped down to the beach where she waded through the loafers and the kings, and dived into the sea. I saw her porpoise a few times; she was heading ESE."

28th December:

"... So tired! Woke up at 04:00 to head down to Funkytown to see whether any of the loggers I deployed on the 26th were back. Beautiful sunrise but no logger birds around. I reckon they're taking longer foraging trips because their chicks are getting larger and can thus go longer without food. Central Foraging Theory predicts that birds will forage as closest to the island as possible, so if they encounter prey they will catch it. However, because of the large concentration of penguins diving for food there is a massive consumption of resources, and so the waters nearest to the island become depleted across the season. This may force them to travel further and take longer foraging trips to search for well stocked waters."

30th December:

"... The maccie chicks are so cute. They're really big now and are even standing next to their parents, sometimes looking like they're just about to fall over... They look as if they're trying so hard to be mature when they preen themselves, mimicking their parents."

After 60-70 days of life, the chicks eventually lose their fluffy down, whereafter they head to sea for the rest of the year until returning for the next summer's madness. At the same time, the parents, now with no responsibilities, head to sea for two weeks to indulge themselves and fatten up for their one month long moulting period which they will spend on land developing a slick new set of feathers.

Before I came to Marion these creatures were but a fairytale to me, only to be seen on BBC Wildlife documentaries and in my dreams. I've since had the opportunity to watch them build their nests, mate and nurture their eggs. I've watched them peck at each other furiously as well as prune and snuggle. I've watched as a shell broke open and a little chick let out its first chirps. I've watched parents come home from a hard day's work at sea and greet their partners with a brilliant display, shouting to the rooftops, before saying a little hello to their chicks and giving them a meal. I've watched the same little chicks grow and stumble around in all their cuteness, and I've watched an unlucky few get carried away in the beak of a skua. I've watched them lose their down and become penguins, penguins that will someday nurture their own eggs and feed their own chicks. I've watched, and I've experienced, and that is something I am truly grateful for, and will never forget.

Macroscapes

"Stretching his hand up to the stars, often a man forgets the flowers at his feet."

— Jeremy Bentham

Marion Island clearly has its stars, and I'm not talking about the unbelievably clear nights. Macaroni penguins take centre stage at the Amphitheatre whilst wandering albatrosses roam the mire-strewn plains of Goney, attracting the attention of passers-by with bubble clicks and wide spread wings. The seals lounge about on the beaches and nearby slopes like royalty, making it very clear that you are an intruding peasant and curse you for waking them up from their afternoon siestas. "Off with his head (or leg)!" I can sometimes hear them say. Have I been here too long? Let us not forget the killer whales, their stardom heightened by their mysterious lives in the deep blue. All these large creatures and their seemingly obvious ways of living are the first to receive our praise and attention, and will forever live their lives in the spotlight.

There are, however, many amazing little worlds on Marion that we so hardly get to be a part of simply because they're too small. I brought along with me, on this adventure of a lifetime, a very special friend who I've become extremely fond of - my Canon 100 mm f2.8 macro lens (thank you Kieron). These are some images of life through her eyes.

This is the flightless moth Pringleophaga marioni, endemic to Marion Island. Thousands of years ago the ancestors of this moth could fly and were blown in the direction of a newly formed volcanic chunk in the Southern Ocean. The relentless winds made flying too dangerous and slowly, after many generations, wings became useless and the moths resorted to walking.

A flower of the coastal plant Cotula plumosa.

A macroscopic Antarctic Tern's eye-view of Lycopodium susurrus

The common chickweed Cerastium fontanum. It's not native to the island, but together with garlic flakes and balsamic vinegar it makes a lovely salad.

A psychadelic lichen spreads its colourful presence over a streamside boulder.

This is Matchstickitus lionensis. Just joking, it's a little sprout from the 100 or so species of moss on the island.

A little aphid wades through the intricate macroscape of an Azorella cushion.

A lichen of the genus Cladonia peers out from a macroscape of hepatics.

A stem flower of the prickly ball plant Acaena magellanica

The gemmae cups of the liverwort Marchantia berteroana are home to the plant's little kids, gemmaes. When the time is right and the rains come, they'll get splashed out and fall to the ground where theyll develop into new liverworts.

Psychedelic lichens like this carpet the volcanic rocks around Marion.

A spider wades through the busy undergrowth of a macroscape.

An intimate look at a prickly ball of Acaena magellanica. The tiny arrows on the end of each spike, which carry the plant's seed at the bottom, attach to the feathers of birds, the fur of seals and the clothes and beards of humans. What a clever dispersal strategy!

A caterpillar of the small flightless moth Embryonopsis halticella munches happily away on a blade of Poa cookii. These caterpillars spend their entire days on these plants until they are ready to cuddle up in a warm silk-lined cocoon sleeping bag where they'll chill out and think about how great it's going to be to fly, erm, walk.

This moss definitely is a pretty flower thing.

A flower of the invasive Sagina procumbens peers out from the crowd.

A newly sprung bud of the small fern Blechnum penna-marina begins its life with an unfurling yawn.

Not much is known about the mushrooms on the island except that they give one hell of a kick! Just joking, this species is thought to belong to the genus Galerina and is deadly poisonous.

Perching on a Blechnum bud, a fledging aphid gets ready to experience the life of an albatross.

The leaves of Acaena magellenica are lined by an intense purple.

One of the many lichen species on the island grows on the 'mouse-walk' at the old base.

A flower of the broadleaved Callitriche antarctica plays host to a wandering down feather.

The life of a King

"Kings are like stars. They rise and they set, they have the worship of the world, but no repose."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

It's a Sunday at Kildalkey Bay and there's a cool, crisp breeze curling in from the ocean as the waves lap languidly at the shore. The ebb and flow of a benign continuum? It must be. I watch and listen, hypnotised, as cobbles are swept down and out, and up and over each other in a tranquil monotony, joined every so often by a few returning kings.

The salty air swirls through me in a wonderful way, invigorating a sense of nostalgia. The sun sits in the sky to the west, smiling large, as the penguins fill the air with a bustling cacophony of whistles and trumpets. It's a packed day at the beach and I'm staring straight into their lives, trying to understand.

Life as a king penguin is rather harsh. They’re continually exposed to wind, rain, snow and ice pellets and the only form of shelter is to huddle together. Individuals spend days and sometimes weeks at sea diving to great depths in search of squid and lantern fish, whilst trying to avoid the menacing jaws of killer whales and seals.

On land they’re a bit safer, but not completely. Giant petrels often storm into the colonies with their wings spread wide looking for weak or injured individuals and vulnerable chicks. The penguins scatter in fright and try to maintain a safe distance, which can sometimes lead to interesting patterns in the colony.

King penguins are asynchronous breeders, which means they don’t follow the same breeding cycles, and at Marion Island they lay eggs anytime between November and March. Whilst one parent heads out to sea to forage, the other keeps the egg balanced on its feet and tucks it into a brood pouch where it is kept nice and warm. The parents take turns to incubate the egg and after about fifty days a little brown chick breaks through the shell and lets out its first few chirps. The parent on duty feeds the chick every so often by regurgitating stored fish and squid.

During this stage the chick is extremely vulnerable as giant petrels and skuas patrol the colony looking for distracted parents. When a chick reaches an age where it is more capable of fending for itself, both parents go to sea and return every now and then to provision their chick. While their parents are away they gather in large crèches and stand around all day sleeping and whistling. Every so often a chick bursts out in a fit of energy and runs around like mad flapping its flippers and bumping into anything in its path. It's hilarious.

It’s quite remarkable how the parents find their chicks when they return to the colonies. No matter how much they sound the same to us, each parent can recognise the whistle of its chick, and vice versa. The parent lets out a soft cooing sound that can be audible at a great range whilst the chick lets out a three note whistle that varies in amplitude and frequency if it hears its parent. When they finally find each other in the colony the parent lets out a loud polysyllabic trumpeting and to confirm their bond the parent wanders off into the colony while the hungry little chick follows suit, whistling away.

Despite the harsh world in which they live, the king penguin population at Marion Island has been fairly stable over the last few decades and hasn’t shown any signs of rapid decline like many other penguin species have. The last census done during the incubating period estimated a total of 65000 pairs on the island, so counting them this summer is going to be quite interesting.

“A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in.”

- Frederick the Great of Prussia

"Now let us sing, long live the King."

- William Cowper

Biophilia

The term biophilia literally means 'love of life or living systems' and has been used by Edward O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology and a professor of entomology at Harvard University, to describe the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.

We haven't always lived in urban environments. We were wild once. And that wild instinct is buried deep within us, resurfacing every time we immerse ourselves in the wildness of the natural world.

The reality is that most of us now live in cities and are immersed in urban life. We have created unique environments for ourselves, with elaborate networks of roads and highways weaving between buildings and winding through landscapes. We have had such an influence on the structure of the environment that the vast expanse of cities and towns can be seen from space. There are few areas left on the planet where the mark of

Homo sapiens urbanus

is not evident, which means that there is little left of the wilderness that once was.

The population of human beings on this planet is expected to reach 7 billion in the next few weeks. The next most numerous large mammal is the crab-eater seal in Antarctica, numbering 22 million. The human race is growing rapidly, and in order to sustain such growth we need resources and living space. Urban expansion is on the rise, particularly in China, the fastest developing country in the world, which houses 20% of the world's population.

A question I often ask myself in this time of rapid growth and urban expansion is 'where are the last wilderness areas going?'. How much will be left in 10, 20 or 50 years time? It is essential to constantly remind ourselves of the importance of the natural world and the role it plays in our lives, whether for sustenance or inspiration.

My experience of Marion Island thus far has been surreal and I am trying my best to share it with all of you back home so that you may also bask in its beauty. This is a short 'trailer' for the documentary I am hoping to produce, which will explore this beautifully wild place whilst delving into the concept of wilderness and its involvement in our lives. Enjoy.

Marion Island: A Wilderness Story

from

Otto Whitehead

on

Vimeo

.

A rare sighting

Leopard seals (

Hydrurga leptonyx

) are solitary animals that inhabit the pack-ice surrounding Antarctica. They have a fearsome reputation as top predators and eat almost anything from fish to elephant seals. Although they are mainly found in Antarctica, every so often a few venture North to see what the sub-Antarctic islands have on the menu.

The other day Chris was doing an elephant seal census from base to Repettos when he came across a juvenile leopard seal sleeping on the cobbles. That evening he radio'd us the news and the next morning Ryan, Maelle and I set off early to catch a glimpse of this incredible creature.

When we got to King Penguin Bay we found him sound asleep on a bed of kelp and were all quite stoked that he hadn't changed his spots.

A frozen paradise

A tranquil pitter patter swirled down from the ceiling and licked at my eardrums. On the window in front of me a hundred or so little droplets cascaded steadily downwards as I watched them with simplicity. I watched how they would sometimes reach out to each other in moments of stillness and upon touching would scurry off with gravity. I watched how as the wind blew, their movements would shift in a jagged synchronicity, catapulting them in unison across the glass. I looked past them and saw the ocean explode into the sky.

‘It’s wild out there’ I thought, turning my eyes on a frigid sea saturated with mountainous swells. I watched as an icy blue crest unfurled an angry lip and crashed into the shallows, turning everything white. The surge launched up the volcanic rock-face of the shore and scattered a vast white blanket over the sky. It lingered, suspended momentarily as if each droplet had wings. Then it fell gently and the droplets returned to a sense of peace and place, filtering back into the ground or wallowing in a rock pool. I thought about how water is constantly on the move. But then I was quick to remember a watery state frozen in time: ice, and its many forms.

A few weeks ago I woke up one morning and opened my blinds. It was a Sunday and it was appropriately sunny. The blue sky made for an eye-indulging contrast to a landscape carpeted in snow and the grasses were hushed and sitting still; there was no wind. ‘A perfect day to explore the ice plateau’, I thought, and rushed outside to gaze inland. The peaks were silhouetted against a clear sky and it was all too perfect. I quickly packed my backpack and Johan and I set off into the heart of this wintery wonderland.

Looking around I was amazed at how the snowfall had completely transformed the landscape. It was unbelievable. I kept trying to find new adjectives to describe its epicness and constantly found myself muttering ‘It’s amazing.’ I’m always fascinated with how wilderness has the ability to astound and confound, leaving one sedated by awe. It’s that vast nothingness that symbolises everything. It encompasses all that is wild and untouched, tranquil and perfect. Each step was done so with a smile, gradually edging closer to Katedraal Hut. I kept on thinking to myself: ‘Here I am, on a volcanic island in the middle of the Southern Ocean, more than two thousand kilometres away from any civilisation, and I’m wading through this surrealistic, snow-carpeted wilderness in a T-shirt as sunshine streams down from a blue sky.’ Never in my wildest dreams.

The wind had sculpted beautiful snow dunes with ripples as you’d find on the bottom of a still lake or calm beach. The sun was low and the snow sparkled in its angular presence. As it set, the sky was gradually coloured in layer by layer, with a deep blue closest to the stars and a rosebud pink softening the billowy clouds on the horizon. A sliver of moon smiled and so did I, this landscape was contagious.

When we reached the hut we found that some snow had forced its way inside through gaps in the door and air vents, the water in the kettle was completely frozen, the floor of the pantry was an ice rink and the walls were covered in the most beautiful ice crystals. 'It gets seriously cold up here!' I remember thinking. We soon got to work turning the kettle ice into hot chocolate, put on the heater, and enjoyed an awesome evening in Marion’s icy attic.

The winds picked up just after midnight and howled as they swept past the hut walls, giving it a little shake as if to remind us of its authority up here. I got up and went outside to pee, trying not to get blown away. The skies were clear and the stars were bright. Being so far away from the masses of artificial light and smog-suffocated cities, it was a perfect opportunity to capture the stars; so I whipped out my camera and tripod, tied on a piece of string and a pen to keep the shutter open, and let it capture their circular ways. I went back to sleep holding thumbs that the weather gods were in a generous mood and would give us another beaut of a day.

We got our wish and left early to explore the ice plateau. Once again the landscape’s rawness etched smiles all the way up our cheeks and froze them there. The skies were clear, the air was calm and the sun glistened off the icy terrain at low angles. The landscape was so frozen that at times it made walking nearly impossible, so we often indulged in a more entertaining form of locomotion:

bumsliding

.

We climbed up one of the highest peaks on the island, had tuna mayonnaise with provitas and admired the view, with the highest, Mascarin (1231m), just a well-flung snowball away.

Fast forward a few weeks later and I found myself riding that snowball over to Mascarin Peak. To time travel one last time, I’m going to rewind two days back to a Saturday. Saturday’s weather forecast was wind and rain, Sunday’s wind and rain, and Monday’s partly cloudy, a little wind and no rain. It was the day of the high pressure system; a very good thing in this part of the world. On the Saturday I was to count nesting gentoo penguins at several colonies on the way to Kildalkey Hut and meet up with Christiaan, who was counting elephant seals, before heading over Karookop to Greyheaded Hut. As predicted the wind and rain followed us all the way to Greyheaded. The plan for the next day, high pressure Monday, was to head up Greyheaded ridge and into the interior, climb up Mascarin Peak, and head over to Katedraal for the night before our descent to base the following day. Good weather was essential and after two long days of howling wind and rain we were sceptical that such a wish would be granted. The winds picked up in the late evening and the hut rattled and rocked into the early hours of the morning.

We awoke early and were quickly enveloped in excitement. The wind had dropped and atop a mist-shrouded valley lay a majestic Mascarin, glistening magically in the early morning sun.

We knew it was going to be an epic hike so we left while the air was still ripe with the birth of the day and headed up Greyheaded ridge to Pyroxene Kop.

After a while the mist in the valley started to clear and the interior was looking amazing. We gleefully waltzed across and up the Basalt Gordyn (every now and then sending an ecstatic 'Whooooooweeeeeeee!' echoing through the valley) and found firm footing on compact snow and black lava coated in mosses and lichenicolous fungi.

The snow eventually started getting really icy and rather slippery, so we strapped some trusty crampons to our boots and continued up through a magnificent landscape strewn with dips and ridges of ice and snow.

By the time we reached West Peak we were blown away by the interior’s surreal nature (and not by the wind, which was still non-existent). Frozen hills and jagged outcrops of horizontal icicles seduced one's eyes into exploring every little detail of the landscape while little puffs of cloud danced in the warm glow of a smiling sun.

We marched on, negotiated a few icy slopes and headed up Mascarin. At 1231m on a perfectly clear, wind-still day, it was an unbelievable place from which to admire this frozen paradise, kept raw and isolated by its volcanic heart and wild nature. Surreal man, surreal.

On the way to Katedraal we passed the ice caves near Resolution Peak which were completely snowed over, testament to the landscape's wintery extreme. An incredible evening sky and a few bits of random commentary and wild cries entertained our minds as our bodies languidly strolled onwards, keen to collapse into the arms of our next abode.

On arrival we found the water tank buried deep in the snow and inside the hut the usual frozen kettle and piles of snow greeted us with a frigid embrace. We warmed up by baking a chocolate cake in celebration of Christiaan's upcoming birthday and then retired to the comfort of our sleeping bags to reflect on the remarkably outlandish and surreal adventure we had just had. Outside the night air was completely still and the silence remarkable. Such tranquility, so much zen. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. Was it all a dream? It certainly could've been.

An evolutionary tale

It was a Sunday morning and my gumboot-wedded feet and I were strolling languidly through a landscape carpeted in snow. It stretched all the way up the valley and past the scoria cones where it hugged the majestic peaks of the interior with a delightful frigidity.

The air was so crisp and still; a tranquil remnant of the storm’s wake. The only inklings of sound were the distant murmurs of chattering king penguins and the intermittent cries of giant petrels. I thought about how strangely dinosaur-like these petrels sounded and began imagining them as the reptiles from which they descended.

I came across a colony and stopped and stared at them like a Japanese tourist; my brain twitching as it tried to unravel the immediate mysteries surrounding the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.

Why did dinosaurs suddenly develop feathers? What did they use them for if they couldn’t fly? And how did they even develop feathers in the first place? I thought about this long and hard and eventually did some reading.

I’m sure that for some of you Archaeopteryx lithographica will sound familiar and for others it won’t. Either way, welcome to the world of the most famous transitional fossil linking birds and reptiles. This feathered reptile was discovered in a limestone quarry in Germany in 1860. ‘Archaeopteryx’ means “ancient wing” and ‘lithographica’ comes from the Solnfern limestone in which it was found.

Archaeopteryx lived around 145 million years ago and although most of its traits were reptilian, it possessed asymmetrical feathers (symbolic of aerodynamic flight) and an opposable big toe (probably used for perching).

So it had both very bird-like and very reptilian-like features; what evolutionists call a “mosaic”. This fossil was revolutionary (or evolutionary) in the sense that it bridged the divide between fossils of fairly modern birds, which appear about 70 million years ago, and those of their theoretical ancestors, the theropods, which were agile, carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs and lived around 200 million years ago. Have a look at the figure below (extracted from Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne) and think about the transitional similarities in the skeletal structures of Compsognathus, Archaeopteryx and the chicken.

From the bottom up you can see the reptilian tail shrinking, the teeth disappearing, the claws fusing together, and the appearance of a large breastbone to anchor flight muscles.

After the discovery of Archaeopteryx, no other reptile-bird intermediates were found for many years, leaving a gaping hole between modern birds and their ancestors. Then, in the mid-1990s, a veritable parade of feathered theropods were discovered in the lake sediments of China. Two of these are shown below (extracted from Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne); Sinornithosaurus millenii, the “Chinese bird-lizard”, and Microraptor gui, the “four-winged dinosaur”.

Theropod dinosaurs didn’t just have primitive bird-like features, it seems; they even behaved in bird-like ways. One fossil shows a feathered female theropod who met her end while sitting on her nest of twenty-two eggs, showing brooding behaviour similar to that of birds. Another fossil shows a small feathered theropod named Mei long, Chinese for “soundly sleeping dragon”, sleeping with its head tucked under its folded, wing-like forearm – exactly as birds do today (see below; extracted from Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne).

Okay, so there’s all this evidence buried in the apple skin of our earth that indicates that once upon a time there existed transitional forms of reptiles and birds, but it still doesn’t tell us why or how the first dinosaurs developed feathers. The truth is nobody is sure. Some scientists have suggested that feathers derive from the same cells which give rise to reptilian scales, and that they developed in these cold-blooded reptiles to increase insulation and help maintain body temperature, but not everyone agrees. Whatever the case, they did develop, and that is a fact.

Another important fact to consider is that early carnivorous dinosaurs evolved longer forelimbs and hands, which probably helped them grab and handle prey. That kind of grabbing would favour the evolution of muscles that would quickly extend the front legs and pull them inward: exactly the motion used in the downstroke of true flight.

So, once feathers arrived on the scene and started having beneficial effects on the survival of those individuals who possessed them, it was all up to natural selection to turn them into the flying descendents they would become over the next hundred million years. Let me explain:

The year was 150 million BC and a certain theropod dinosaur was trying to outrun a predator.

He didn’t, but some of his more feathered relatives did.

They managed to escape because their partially feathered forearms acted as running aids, making them faster and more agile. Those theropods who were best adapted to escaping their predators went on to reproduce and pass their genes onto the next generation. In each generation there are likely to be genetic mutations; it’s just the way life is, you can’t always make a perfect copy. So in the next generation most of the theropods would be partially feathered, however, there would also be some with slightly fewer or shorter feathers and some with slightly more or longer feathers. This generation would be subject to the same predation pressures and natural selection would once again make sure the better adapted theropods would survive and go on to reproduce. And it goes on and on until one day BAM! there goes a flying theropod.

But hey, this is just one scenario and the fact that these changes were induced solely by predation pressure isn’t necessarily so. There may have been other evolutionary drivers such as competition for resources and there’s always the “tree down” theory.

For instance there is evidence that some theropods lived in trees.

Feathery forearms would have allowed them to glide from tree to tree (or tree to ground), helping them escape predators, find food more readily and cushion their falls.

Whatever the case, feathered forearms were clearly an advantage and it was inevitable that as natural selection began to favour those who could fly farther instead of merely gliding, leaping or flying for short bursts, flight would soon become one of the most widespread and well used innovations of evolution. The incredible diversity of birds found today is testament to this fact.

Unfortunately, like many other groups, birds have suffered massively as a result of anthropogenic ways. Of the more than 10000 bird species that humans have co-existed with, 150 have become extinct, 189 are critically endangered, and over 1500 are listed as vulnerable or threatened. On the whole, the status of birds worldwide is getting worse and worse every day as more forests are burned, more wetlands are bulldozed, more pesticides are sprayed, more power lines and cell phone towers are erected, more invasive aliens and diseases are spread, and more longline fishing hooks are deployed.

The situation is dire, but the important part is that more people are becoming aware and positive change is happening.

Still, there are those who may argue that we don’t really need birds, so why waste time and money trying to save them? Well, then I must exclaim that these people clearly don’t understand or appreciate the significance of life, diversity and the overwhelmingly beautiful products of millions of years of gradual evolution.