If you’ve ever wondered how we keep track of the penguin population here at the colony, just imagine a mix of feisty penguins, lots of data and an abundance of penguin poo!
Every week for the last 30 or so years, our monitoring staff have visited every nesting box in the colony and recorded the occupancy of each. We identify the adults who are home and the stage of breeding they are at. It is almost impossible to tell individual penguins apart, so we insert a small microchip under the skin of each penguin, which means we assign them with their very own unique identification number. During monitoring we know exactly who the penguin is by scanning the penguin with a special reader. We’ll note down their ID number, the nest it was found in, and most excitingly, if they have any eggs or chicks. For some of the chicks they’ll get a weekly weigh-in starting in their second week of life. To weigh the chicks, we carefully place them in a cotton bag (while also trying to avoid their projectile poo!), check their weight, and then give them a temporary mark so we can tell the chicks apart. Most penguin parents will have two chicks, so we want to make sure we are assigning the correct weight to the correct chick each week.
Once the chicks reach six weeks old, it’s time for them to get their own ID number and will have a microchip inserted. We make sure we do this in plenty of time for when they fledge, at around eight weeks. Once a chick is microchipped, it will get weighed every week until it fledges, that is until it leaves the colony to go to sea. That way we can get the chicks final ‘fledge weight’, which is a key indicator of the chick’s chance of surviving its first year.
By the end of the monitoring day the team are often smelly and covered in penguin poo, especially if there have been lots of chicks at home and they love every minute! The monitoring programme is the backbone of our research here at the colony. It helps us keep track of the growth of the colony, identify any changes in the breeding success over time, and ensure our tourism work has no negative impacts on these incredible penguins.