November 16, 2011 Buh-buh-buh bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word

I’ve lost track of how many days it’s been since we started our watch schedules and I had to shift my sleep schedule a whole 12 hours to work on the midnight to noon shift. The days started blending together and dates started getting confused almost immediately upon first waking up at 11pm to start the day.  A lot seems to happen on the night shift though. Last night, for instance, we were swarmed by birds. We had a pretty good snow storm last night. By sunrise the decks were thoroughly covered in snow, and apparently birds like to sit in that snow because there were a couple dozen of them all hanging out on the back deck when I started my shift.

: A bunch of cape petrels, a couple prions, and a fulmar hanging out on the back deck.

The birds here aren’t really afraid of humans at all so you can walk right up to them and they won’t move much. They sort of just shuffle a bit to the side and squawk at you angrily. It was the highlight of my evening. Or day. Or morning. It’s hard to say at this point.

We even had birds come "indoors". He had flown into the aquarium room where Big Melissa, Paola, and Ann were attempting to sort through zooplankton that we had just caught, and gotten himself wedged in between a big storage type container and the wall. Well I couldn’t have that, so I encouraged him to leave the aquarium room, and he eventually returned back on the deck.

 A prion in the aquarium room. He flew to the back of that black container there and got stuck between it and the wall before returning to the outdoors.

As the sun started to rise most of the birds flew away, but several were left up on the O1 deck, just chillin’ outside by the door. They eventually flew off though so I guess they were just taking a rest on the ship during the night.

Prions chilling by the door.

The O1 deck, covered in snow. The primary site of bird sitting.

Melissa M (a.k.a. Little Melissa, a.k.a Munchkin, a.k.a. Muffin)