Ichaboe week 2 - 02/01/2007
Door: Fleurchah
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Fleur
31 Januari 2007 | Namibië, Windhoek
Ichaboe Island, Namibia
02/01/2007!
Happy New Year! It’s freaking 2007 already, damnnn.. time flies by so quickly! But okay, so yeah, today marks our 2nd week on the island and we are already planning to leave.. there’s not much to do here, well okay we knew that, but on a scientific level as well. Seems that the whole ecosystem has really had a rough year. This had been happening in South Africa for a while but now it’s hit Namibia as well. The birds are breeding about a month late, so that means we are kind of a month early.. to get done what we want to get done. The whole point of me and Ralf of course, being here, is to study the behaviour in relation to the offspring. Me, the begging behaviour of the chicks and Ralf the foraging behaviour of the parents while breeding. So this all when there are hardly any chicks leads to not much work being done. Which can seem relaxing but nah, we are here to get something done and yeah I’m filling my time now with greeting behaviour of the couples and yeah it seems there might be something in it, but even that is kind of difficult to compare when there are hardly any chicks. So we are trying to see when a boat will be able to pick us up, but we heard we’ll only find out about that next week or hope for a lift from a fishing boat passing by on it’s way back to shore. So we will just have to wait and see. So for now I’ll still be here and I guess following the growth of the chicks we do have and then of course the greeting ceremonies of the couples/parents. And for the rest, yeah I’m nearly done reading my books and I kick ass at Yahtzee now and well my solitaire skills are back up to par. Haha, yeah that’s what ya do on an island when all else fails and oh yeah a dvd once in a while on the laptop, ha..And yes how we’ve celebrated the holidays of course. Well for one I finally had some cell phone reception, yayy.. but that was of course only of a short duration and now no more, so maybe soon again as I have tried to send and receive some text messages which yeah has worked twice so far.. But okay so for Christmas we had a ‘day off’ and had a braai (BBQ) and went crayfishing so we got to have some yumyum lobster all for free, yayyyy.. eventhough I heard grand stories of the amount being able to catch here, but that somehow too has seemed to disappoint. But for New years we tried again, I say we, but Ralf went fishing and I went bird observing, we (Ralf, haha..) caught 9 so 3 each was not bad. And yeah so with New years we went by Tony (Island manager) and ate the lobster there at the strike of midnight with some snacks and potatoe and pasta salad and of course beer, rum and champagne! Needless to say some of us didn’t feel too well the next day and I was even allowed to sleep in, not that the natural alarm clock doesn’t try to wake you (somehow a lot of birds like to make noise at daybreak, oh well..). We shall see when the next braai is, we don’t have much meat along with us to braai so yeah we bum off of Tony for some chicken, haha.. and for the rest just hope some more chicks pop up soon and don’t get predated by the gulls (we’ve lost 2 out of 14 so far) and yeah hopefully not like today some seal pops up into the colony and squishes some birds. See even that is weird, a lot of seals are dying early as well.. the whole ecosystem somehow has been messed up even with the fishing industry having been closed for a month. Hope all turns out okay for the ‘vulnerable’ species (not yet endangered) and we have some work to do soon or go to Malgas Island where there should be quite some more chicks now, but as we have no power over when the boat can come pick us up it’s all a waiting game. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and celebrated the year change festively. Hope all is well and to be able to have contact again soon.
Love,
Fleur.
02/01/2007!
Happy New Year! It’s freaking 2007 already, damnnn.. time flies by so quickly! But okay, so yeah, today marks our 2nd week on the island and we are already planning to leave.. there’s not much to do here, well okay we knew that, but on a scientific level as well. Seems that the whole ecosystem has really had a rough year. This had been happening in South Africa for a while but now it’s hit Namibia as well. The birds are breeding about a month late, so that means we are kind of a month early.. to get done what we want to get done. The whole point of me and Ralf of course, being here, is to study the behaviour in relation to the offspring. Me, the begging behaviour of the chicks and Ralf the foraging behaviour of the parents while breeding. So this all when there are hardly any chicks leads to not much work being done. Which can seem relaxing but nah, we are here to get something done and yeah I’m filling my time now with greeting behaviour of the couples and yeah it seems there might be something in it, but even that is kind of difficult to compare when there are hardly any chicks. So we are trying to see when a boat will be able to pick us up, but we heard we’ll only find out about that next week or hope for a lift from a fishing boat passing by on it’s way back to shore. So we will just have to wait and see. So for now I’ll still be here and I guess following the growth of the chicks we do have and then of course the greeting ceremonies of the couples/parents. And for the rest, yeah I’m nearly done reading my books and I kick ass at Yahtzee now and well my solitaire skills are back up to par. Haha, yeah that’s what ya do on an island when all else fails and oh yeah a dvd once in a while on the laptop, ha..And yes how we’ve celebrated the holidays of course. Well for one I finally had some cell phone reception, yayy.. but that was of course only of a short duration and now no more, so maybe soon again as I have tried to send and receive some text messages which yeah has worked twice so far.. But okay so for Christmas we had a ‘day off’ and had a braai (BBQ) and went crayfishing so we got to have some yumyum lobster all for free, yayyyy.. eventhough I heard grand stories of the amount being able to catch here, but that somehow too has seemed to disappoint. But for New years we tried again, I say we, but Ralf went fishing and I went bird observing, we (Ralf, haha..) caught 9 so 3 each was not bad. And yeah so with New years we went by Tony (Island manager) and ate the lobster there at the strike of midnight with some snacks and potatoe and pasta salad and of course beer, rum and champagne! Needless to say some of us didn’t feel too well the next day and I was even allowed to sleep in, not that the natural alarm clock doesn’t try to wake you (somehow a lot of birds like to make noise at daybreak, oh well..). We shall see when the next braai is, we don’t have much meat along with us to braai so yeah we bum off of Tony for some chicken, haha.. and for the rest just hope some more chicks pop up soon and don’t get predated by the gulls (we’ve lost 2 out of 14 so far) and yeah hopefully not like today some seal pops up into the colony and squishes some birds. See even that is weird, a lot of seals are dying early as well.. the whole ecosystem somehow has been messed up even with the fishing industry having been closed for a month. Hope all turns out okay for the ‘vulnerable’ species (not yet endangered) and we have some work to do soon or go to Malgas Island where there should be quite some more chicks now, but as we have no power over when the boat can come pick us up it’s all a waiting game. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and celebrated the year change festively. Hope all is well and to be able to have contact again soon.
Love,
Fleur.
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