a Personal PrelUde | xiwards the end of their laying period and some birds had failed to lay in
burrows, as per nature’s blueprint. Instead, caught short, they laid on
the ground. The egg was doomed and so I gathered enough eggs to thrive
on a daily omelette, cooked on a small smoky fire just outside the tent.
But the ground under the ferns was peaty, and eventually started to
smoulder. If my activities set the colony alight, that would be cata-
strophic. Nearby, water was scarce. The only solution was to stand up...
Ten years later I headed south again out of Cape Town towards the
Norwegian sector of Antarctica. After navigating the big grey seas of
the Southern Ocean, the Norwegian research vessel, R/V Polar Queen,
thumped through the Antarctic pack ice for several days. I never quite
became accustomed to the clattering noise of ice sliding past the vessel’s
hull so it was with relief that we reached the permanent ice – and could
go no further. There we boarded a helicopter and flew inland for 50
minutes over white nothing. Abruptly, stony snowless mountains reared
out of the ice. We landed on the margins of the world’s largest known
colony of Antarctic Petrels, 200,000 pairs apparently happy to nest on
the snow- free slopes, albeit at least an hour’s flying from the sea. Did
this distant site protect the birds from the rapacious predatory South
Polar Skuas? To answer that question was the objective of our study.
These are some highlights from a lifetime as a seabird biologist. My
work has mostly entailed studying the birds ashore, and remaining frus-
tratingly ignorant of the birds’ activities at sea. Only over the last 20 or
so years have modern electronic devices begun to reveal the details of
those activities. The revelations are astounding. They have enhanced the
wonder of seabirds. This book aims to share that wonder. It feels as if
seabird enthusiasts have suddenly found the long- sought key to the door
that allows an escape from dark ignorance to a new vista of wondrous
knowledge.