by
Lynn Salmon
How does one get involved with counting penguins? Like many people, I find penguins amusing and fun to watch. So when presented with an opportunity to spend time up close and personal with the little creatures, I eagerly volunteered to join a group doing a survey of the population of Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor) on Gabo Island, which is located just off the coast of Australia near the border where Victoria meets New South Wales. This will be one of the first extensive counts of the penguins on Gabo Island, though the people I will be going with have conducted similar counts on Montagu Island in years past.
(November 18-20, 1994) GETTING TO MALLACOOTA
[BIG]
John and I set out for a short holiday before he would
drop me off in Mallacoota for the penguin expedition.
We drove down the coast stopping in the town of Eden, pictured
above, the first
night and then continuing on to Victoria. We visited
the Croajingolong National Park and had a very picturesque
dining experience with our camp stove at Betka Beach.
We learned that a mechanic can get our car door unlocked
quicker than John could set his stopwatch to time the process.
Rain, rain go away, come to Mallacoota some other day. The weather wasn't very cooperative, but we explored some walking tracks near Mallacoota while waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. The beginning of the walk passed through pittosporums and was fairly pleasant, but we didn't spot the rare Mallacoota gum which was supposed to be along the track we followed. Most of the beach walk was nice, though slow going slogging along in the sand. There was a group of three pied oyster catchers also taking a walk. We found a nice grouping of rocks to sit on, but cut our lunch short due to ominous looking clouds and lightning in the distance toward Shipwreck Creek camp area. We headed back to the hotel and ate our lunch there instead.
I did get a first look at Gabo Island, soon to be my home away from home for the next three weeks. Gabo is located ~10km north of Mallacoota, approximately 1km from the mainland. It's not very large, 2 square km in area, with approximately 6 km circumference. We could see the lighthouse at the south end of the island. We also saw one dead fairy penguin washed up on the beach. One less to count.
Around 7pm we connected with most of the other penguin people and got dinner at the pub. At dinner I learned that Short-tailed Shearwaters (also called Mutton Birds) Puffinus tenuirostris take a long trip up to Kamchatka, and occasionally down into Alaska, but make their way back to the same nesting sites each year and all of the birds will lay their eggs in a two day window expected around November 25 this year. While a penguin count is our primary goal, we will also be noting any shearwaters found on the island. These birds also nest in burrows and occasionally occupy vacant penguin holes.
Our penguin group is being led by Dr. Peter Fullagar [photo, lower right]. He's the only one I've met in advance since I know his son Dave. The rest of the group consists of:
- Mike Crowley [photo], a science teacher from Moruya and avid birder, plus one of Peter's long standing partners from bird counts on Montagu Island.
- Gordon Harris [photo], another science teacher and colleague of Mike's, also from Moruya.
- Nick Klomp, a lecturer in the School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW
- Two of Nick's students, Jamie Weber [photo] and Prudence Bartlett [photo] are with us, and a third student, Nicole Grenfeld[photo], will be joining us in a week.
- Also to join us tomorrow will be penguin expert, Pauline Reilly who has worked with penguins on Phillip Island since 1967 and written several books including, Fairy Penguins and Earthy People and Penguins of the World.
![[photo]](gabo10.jpg){kind=link}
![[photo]](gabo12.jpg){kind=link}
![[photo]](gabo5.jpg){kind=link}
Day 1 (November 21, 1994) WE'RE OFF
[BIG]
We got going early and had some fun loading some big stuff into
a small boat which had its exciting moments.
We took along a
4 wheel drive motor bike and a trailer that had to be pushed up ramps
and into the boat. The boat's cargo area was only slightly larger than
the trailer which required a lot of manipulation to make things fit.
Fortunately, there was a crane at the dock on Gabo Island, so unloading went
more smoothly.
There was quite a bit of spray, and waves
periodically washed across the back of the open boat on the trip to
Gabo causing us to arrive a bit damper than we had left.
We briefly met
the light keeper, Pat Howell, his wife Judy, and two of their three
sons who came out to meet us in the drizzling weather.
We are also being joined by two of the Park
Service employees, Morris and Phil, who have some of their own penguin
counts to do on the island and will be with us for a couple of days.
Our accommodations are in two of three houses originally used
when there were three full time keepers stationed on the island.
Now, there is only one light keeper, Pat, who occupies one house.
In the past, it was one keepers job to fire rockets during periods of
fog. Three rockets had to be fired every 15 minutes instead of having
a fog horn.
After lunch, we went out
to work on laying the first transect at about 3pm. We split
into two teams to work on two parallel transect lines 100m apart.
Maps of the island have had 12 transect lines marked out, spaced
at 100m intervals running North-South the entire length of the island.
Transect work involves finding the transect you are on with
the aid of landmarks from aerial photos of the island and laying
out 100m reels of measuring tape along the line of the transect.
Then the area one meter on each side of the tape is thoroughly
searched and each and every penguin burrow is noted along
with the contents no matter what the terrain. In the end, each
penguin counted will represent 50 penguins, and the total will be
estimated with corrections for terrain, etc.
Each time we find a nest we usually pull out the penguins, often
two chicks, but sometimes an adult sitting on eggs or with small
chicks. A vegetation mapper records the type of vegetation found
along the transects, soil depth readings every 50m, and grade of slope.
They also note the location of each of the burrows and what was found
including the ages of the chicks, depth of the burrow, etc. The tough
part is fighting the way through brambles and heavy scrub when it is
in the measuring area.
We have, I believe, 19km total length to cover in this manner.
Banksia and tea-trees are found in the higher areas in the center of
the island. Pig-face, heath and tussock grassland predominate
in the lower areas with kikuyu grass growing as a weed. Around mid-morning, the light keeper's son, Sean,
ran in and said, "Whales!". So we all ran out. There were at least
four humpback whales, two large whales and two calves, playing in the
surf in plain sight from the lighthouse porch. I saw them for about 15
minutes doing their leaping ballet through the water. Peter also saw
an albatross and a black faced cormorant and offered everyone a look
through his telescope. Pauline echoed popular sentiment when she
said, "Stuff the cormorant, I want to watch the whales."
"We're laughing now." We went out about 11am and finished the
transects we started yesterday and then started working on
transect #3. I skipped out at around 4pm and came back to take a turn
making dinner. We seem to be well provisioned, thanks to Mike's
planning, with a lot of meat in the freezer, plenty of custard,
several casks of wine, bread, fruit, vegetables, cheese, and more.
With so much wine on hand, I decided to make
beef bourguignonne. It
took a long time to simmer so I baked some Puffin brand chocolate sponge
puddings that weren't too bad considering they came from packages.
We also have another variety of "self-anointing" sponge pudding cakes
that come in cans.
A hard day, transect 5 (we're doing all the odd transects first)
was about 2km long and went through dense bushes and low trees.
Crash, crash, bang into one tree branch after another.
Many bruises, but miraculously no ripped clothes from the blackberry
brambles.
Pauline had a dizzy spell and some chest palpitations and decided
to go back early since a boat was coming today. She, fortunately,
felt fine before the boat arrived. I can't say the same for my back,
which couldn't take one more bend down and grope around under the bush
after about 2pm. Otherwise, it was a beautiful day, around 80F, and
since we were in the middle of the island with all the trees, we
didn't get too much sun.
There were a handful of penguins up in all the dense scrub.
It must be quite a chore for them to get up there since it is
quite a chore for us, and our legs are longer. I think the
preliminary estimate from the data so far is 22,000 pairs, but
transects 1-3 covered a very populated penguin area so the count
is expected to go down. Phil left us today and was replaced
by Rod, also from the Park Service. Both he and Morris will
leave in two days, however.
Alas, no turkey
available for the traditional turducken.
The Park Service people have set up some marked areas in
densely populated penguin areas and periodically survey all
the burrows in their marked plots. Jamie and I spent a morning banding any of
the birds found in these plots. Jamie just finished
his honors thesis with 11 months of penguin diet studies on
Montagu Island and will probably be continuing for a Ph.D. with
more work on penguins. He has a Little Penguin banding license
and wants to band at least 100 birds while we are at Gabo.
The banded birds get a numbered, stainless steel bracelet
put around the right flipper.
Next, the teams regrouped to attack transect #7.
Up and through the bush.
It took us
from 9am-2pm to hack our way 1.5km through the blackberries,
banksia, tea-trees and other scrub. It gives me new appreciation for
the term overland.
Transect #7 runs through the center of the island, so there
weren't many birds. I managed to pull a couple of them out of their
holes near the end.
The adult penguins fight and bite all
the way. Not to mention what they do with their other end.
Nick Klomp was left back at the lighthouse for one
last ditch effort to repair the penguin scope before he left
us on Friday along with the Park Service people. Nick was replaced
by his student, Nicole who is also called Nik.
Tonight was our first penguin landing count. Little penguins tend
to stay out to sea all day, sometimes for multiple days at a time, and
return to their burrows in the evening just after sunset. They tend
to stick to the same landing site day after day and counting them come
ashore is another way to get an estimate of the population. It's also
a lot of fun to watch them waddle in together as half a million
visitors annually witness at
the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island. That spectacle is just the
penguins naturally coming in for the evening as they did before
the lights, fences, and PA system were installed for the tourists.
Gordon and I chose
our vantage points at two different penguin landing areas on the
west side of the island. These are
easily recognized by the whitewash trails leading up from the sea.
Initially, I was worried that no penguins were going to land at
my spot because nothing happened from 7:30 until 8:16pm when the first
penguin swam in and landed. It took another 20 minutes or so before more
started coming and it began to be hard to keep count.
They like to collect in little groups and then charge in with an
occasional straggler staying behind to join the next group.
Counting becomes a matter of counting all those in a cluster area
and trying to subtract those that continue on and then recounting the
cluster to see if new ones have joined the group.
While waiting for the penguins, I also got to see a lot
of shearwaters flying in, coming very close to where I was sitting.
It was the big egg laying day for them so we should start finding
shearwaters on eggs occupying abandoned penguin burrows starting
tomorrow.
In all, I counted 62 penguins before Gordon signaled time to head back.
Jamie and Nik together were at a really huge
landing site on the north end with over 600 penguins coming ashore. That's
about the same number of birds that come in to the Penguin Parade
at Phillip Island. Prue had only about 40 and Gordon 322.
Peter and Mike counted 80 and 100, respectively at sites near the lighthouse.
We had a very late dinner cooked by Mike, but it was excellent.
He marinated chicken in soy sauce, honey, ginger, onion, garlic,
and a little red wine while we were out counting penguins, then
simmered it in the frying pan when we got back.
Dinner was accompanied by Peter's CD, Sound Portrait
of an Island - Montagu, Island of Birds . This is
an ABC audio release that was produced by Ederic Slater and
Peter Fullagar in 1992. It contains a segment of sounds that
one would hear at night when the penguins are coming ashore.
They make a lot of noise in the evenings when they are active,
as we get to experience first-hand.
[Penguin braying sound file]
The days are beginning to blur together and the day of the week,
or the date isn't very meaningful except for the data sheets. The
pace has altered dramatically from the all-day ordeals last week. It
is quite pleasant, and we were able to lounge around at the lighthouse
part of each day and are treated to humpback whales displaying for us.
Prue, Jamie, and Nik attempted to go swimming, but found the
water too cold. The temperature doesn't bother Pat a bit,
who dives in and has gotten abalone for us a few times.
We've had the fresh abalone, just quickly fried in a little oil
for an appetizer at dinners and it was great. Sometimes Gordon
coats it with crumbs, and I've also tried a bit raw, and it's
been good each time.
Pat also had some documents pertaining to the
island including The Gabo Island Light station Conservation
Plan. The first lightkeeper was George Tapp and his son,
C.J. Tapp published his recollections in The Age,
4 August, 1934. The current granite lighthouse
was designed in 1859 and began operation in late 1862.
Gabo Island
(latitude 37o 34' S; longitude 149o 55' E)
is a dangerous feature on a dangerous
coast and has been the site of many shipwrecks. I've listed
a few below.
On the second night of penguin counting
I hit the jackpot with 526 birds and
a peak 15 minute period of 198! I had taken my camera along
planning to take a few flash pictures in the lulls, but I never got
a lull. Jamie, on the other hand,
had only 4 birds at his sight.
We also retrieved a badly banded
penguin who's flipper had been cut up by the metal band.
It had been banded by some other person
quite some time ago judging by the low number.
The Australian Bird Banding Scheme keeps the
records and one reports sightings of banded birds to them
so the information will be transmitted to the original bander.
Jamie extracted the band and recorded the
bird's weight and measurements before releasing it without
re-banding it. The bird was very fat and should be fine.
At least at night, the place is alive with the
sounds
of penguins coming ashore and scampering along their paths.
The chicks come out of the burrows and stand crying to be fed.
We've continued the nightly penguin counts each evening.
Since the penguins
like to use the road at night to get to their burrows,
they make it nearly impossible to drive. It is even hard just to
walk along the road at night without stepping on an
occasional penguin. One night Pat tried to pick us up with his
truck after a count, but
Gordon and Mike had to keep getting off the truck to shoo birds
out of the way so we gave up on motor transport after dark.
In three successive evenings my tallies were 163, 167, and 160.
For that last count, the sea was pretty rough and the
penguins frequently got washed back off the rocks after landing and had
to try again. This put a new wrinkle into the counting procedure,
first bird landed at 8:12, and 8:18, and again at 8:21 ...
Daytime activities have been more varied.
Peter and Mike go out early in the morning to bird watch and take sound
recording equipment to record some calls.
The "Germans" (Peter's term for overalls)
were also washed and hung to dry on the line.
Gordon spent some time fishing
and also collected
crabs and some mussels which we had for lunch.
We mapped the locations where the penguins land around the
coastline of the island. We have broken the island into three parts
for landing site mapping. Gordon and I have the west side. Peter and
Mike are mapping the south end plus up the east side a bit, and Prue,
Jamie, and Nik are doing the rest of the east and around the north end
until they meet up with Gordon's and my section. Mapping also provided
the opportunity to check out some tide pools with crabs and other
creatures in them.
John
is supposed
to fly in and join us tomorrow if the
weather conditions are acceptable.
John made it in fine.
Pat then took the plane in to Mallacoota,
the big city, for a doctor's appointment and to bring his son back
a few hours later.
Pat hasn't been off the island in over a year and wasn't
too keen on leaving.
Our final days on Gabo were spent
eating the remainder of our huge stores of custard,
oranges, potatoes, fruit cake and other foods. There
was plenty of time for reading, beach combing, sitting
up top in the lighthouse hoping for more whales that
didn't appear, and seeing the weather change-up.
We continued checking on a family of sooty oyster catchers, small
black birds with orange beaks with a nest in plain sight of our porch
at the lighthouse. They were noted on the first day we arrived with
an egg at a nest site. The egg hatched soon after and the two adult
birds have been raising their child ever since.
My second to last penguin count was at the beach next to
the jetty where I
saw 547 birds. This was a great landing site to
count. Besides being my own private penguin parade as large
as the one on Phillip Island, there was a little track worn
down where the penguins had to go by me in single file, so
they were easy to count as well, and close up.
We did one last penguin count at the north end of the island.
John and I counted two landings that were next to one another.
Each of the two landings forked and our forked paths crossed.
There weren't many birds, however, 66 for me and 65 for John.
We also rescued one that we startled into falling down a crevasse.
And so the penguin adventure comes to a close.
First we bade goodbye to Peter, Mike, and Gordon
who waited behind for the
boat to return and get them. The rest of us left
after saying farewell to Pat and his island. We
were returned to the parked cars left behind in
Mallacoota. Here we left Nik and Prue in the parking lot with
Morris trying to restart Nik's reluctant
vehicle. Jamie drove John and me as far as Merrimbula where
our car was parked at the airport, and we parted company
after stopping in town for fish and chips.
So the story ends.
The final estimate turned out
to be just over 15,000 nesting pairs making Gabo Island
the largest colony of Little Penguins in the world.
Gabo Island
[BIG]
Pulling the chicks out of the hole can also be
a challenge. I managed to get a hold of 4 or 5 and spotted a few eggs
and a couple of nests too deep to "grope". For the deep holes, Nick
Klomp has a camera on a flexible arm to poke down and take a look.
This is the first time it has ever been used, and it has a few bugs in
the system. I got to aid in its repair work with the trusty phillip's
head attachment on my Swiss army knife. Never do field work without
one. Nick did bring duct tape which was used to attempt a later
repair to the system.
Day 2 (November 22, 1994) THAR' SHE BLOWS!
Day 3 (November 23, 1994) HARD WORK
Days 4-5 (November 24-5, 1994) THANKSGIVING
[BIG]
I got the easy job of recording the data while Nick and Morris
pulled out the penguins, and Jamie measured them. Some of the
new vocabulary I learned are: gonys - bump on the bottom of the bill;
and culmen - spot at the head end of the bill typically 30-40mm from
the tip; other measurements performed were bill depth at nostrils,
bill width at nostrils, and length of head plus bill (typically 90mm).
Jamie referred to a lot of them as being
"aggro". I'm not sure if this is aggressive or
aggravated, but both adjectives fit the mood of a fairy penguin
after an encounter with a long arm dragging it from its burrow. 
[BIG]
Today I did bird weighing which is accomplished by stuffing the
penguin in a canvas sack and hanging it from a scale (Jamie is shown
doing it in the photo). I guess
the sack sufficiently resembles a burrow that the penguins don't
seem to mind too much, even though they occasionally got
hung on the fence while waiting to have their measurements taken.
The birds weighed today were in the range 0.9 to 1.525 kg after
subtracting the bag weight.
The hardest part of the morning was the ride up and back in
the trailer attached to the motor bike with Rod driving like
Evel Knevil all over the island. Day 6 (November 26, 1994) FIRST PENGUIN LANDING COUNT
[BIG]
We had an easy day doing the two shortest
transects, #11 and #12 located near the lighthouse.
One transect ran through Pat's house, but he wasn't
harboring any penguins under his bed.
We've now completed all of the odd numbered transects on the
island and have come up with an updated estimate of 19,500
pairs of penguins. Days 7-10 (November 27-30, 1994) THE PACE RELAXES
[BIG]
During some free time, I looked through
articles written about Gabo Island that Peter
brought along. Among them was, "An Archaeological
Survey of the Coast From Cape Howe to Wingam Point Including
Gabo Island" by Richard Fullagar, a postgraduate student
in the Prehistory Dept., Latrobe University.
The paper contained some general information
about the island.
The Gabo lighthouse was built
using granite quarried on the island.
Evidently the granite on the island contains
red biotite and is famous for its use as a building material.
I counted 212 steps in the lighthouse when
I went up to the top of it.
There are also two granite huts, purportedly built by early
sealers. We came across one of them when doing transect #10.
Days 11-12 (December 1-2, 1994) OVER 15,000 PAIRS
[BIG]
We put in a final push to complete the
hard transecting work.
Jamie spent a lot of time bashing through thick scrub
with a sickle, severing one of the meter tapes.
Our final day was
beautiful with excellent weather, and we
had lunch in the field.
It felt pretty good to know the hard work
was wrapped up, though
there are plans for more evening penguin
counts and also shoreline mapping of the landing sites. Days 13-15 (December 3-5, 1994) THE HILLS ARE ALIVE
Days 16-18 (December 6-8, 1994) FINAL DAYS
[BIG]
We spent some time one morning on a frog expedition.
For personal interest, Mike wanted to catch some frogs
and Pat's son, Sean led us to his favorite frogging
places on the island.