My favorite 487, Sven Erich, Stumpy Buddha, Little Chris, and Buster!

Starting things off, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy New Year everybody! Above is a photo of 487 and I on Christmas day. Below is a photo taken a split second after he snapped at my face, coming uncomfortably close to my left eye.



Up next we have Sven - Erich, so named by a couple of our German volunteers. Sven is awesome, but could not discern the differences between an edible fish and my arm/elbow/fingers/ankles. Upon entering the pen, Sven will quietly follow you around, and gaze up at you. He doesn't beg for fish as some of his penguin peers do, but he knows how to tug on your heart strings so you're compelled to feed him. He's tiny, soft and too cute for words.

Sven coming over to check out what I'm doing.

Sven attempting to nibble on my elbow.

Sven trying to eat my fingers. There are very few birds I would do this with, as some of the more aggressive/bigger birds would take your finger off. Well, maybe not off, but they definitely draw blood. Sven is very gentle. He was mostly just testing my finger to see if it was fish. Once he realized no part of me is edible to a penguin, he mostly just looked at me as though to say "Okay, so where's the fish?"




This is 417 - one of my stumpy enemies. At least, he was an enemy. Ever since the introduction of a new stumpy friend, 474, the pair of them have been significantly less ass-hole-ish. Now he mostly just sits in the corner, serenely staring into the sun. I've taken to calling him stumpy Buddha. And the other day, I caught him and 474 preening each other. Sadly, I didn't have my camera but it was really cute. I was initially concerned that they would begin teaming up and plotting against us, but so far it just seems like they make each other happy. Laying down and having an afternoon nap below, is 474. Before he got together with stumpy Buddha, he'd never let me get this close to him without popping up, ready to nip at my nearest passing limb. But now they're both nice! Well, maybe not nice. But nicer!







This is a photo of myself and little Chris, aka 489. He weighs less than an empty wine glass and was super sweet. He was really really ill when we had him. I handled him throughout the day without gloves or arm guards, thats how weak he was. I'm only wearing them in the photo as it was during feeding time, and we had a lot of much more aggresive and reluctant birds to feed. We could barely get him to keep down fish tails, so he went back to penguin ICU. From there, it was discovered that he had bebezia. I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it can often be a precursor to more serious cases of avian malaria, so he went to a place where he could get more care throughout the night. Haven't heard recently how he's doing, but as of yesterday he had made it through the night. Fingers crossed for him!


Buster! He's 477. I had him in ICU when I first started working and his wound has started closing and he's getting stronger so he was moved to Pen 2 about a week ago. Below is a photo of his wound, and believe it or not it looks LOADS better. When he first came in, you could see his insides and air sacs. He was bitten by a seal. With a lot of medication and attention, he's looking like he'll eventually heal up and be able to be released!



I'm very attached to him for some reason. I think it's because he came in the day before I started working, so he's been there consistently the entire time I have. And I've gotten to see how much better he's gotten. I hope I'll eventually get to see him released! I'm already at my 6 week point, so I've only got a few more weeks to go! It's crazy how quickly the time has gone by! I hope the next six weeks will give everyone enough time to prepare for me to talk nonstop about penguins. Or at least work on your "tuning out Sona's inncessant penguin ramblings" skills.

Cape Point Tour!

This is a photo I took of two penguins holding hands and kissing. Ah.Fricking.Dorable.

Oh my goodness. I say this all the time, but there is SO much to write about. To get started, the Cape Point Tour.
We began our tour in Table View, on the top left of the map, in the area across from Robben Island. This is also where I'm staying, in relation to Cape Town. We started the day by heading south towards Camps Bay and stopping in Hout Bay for a 10 minute cruise to Seal Island.
Not exactly the most original name for an island covered in seals, but it does get the point across.



The seals here in Hout Bay are at less of a risk than others along the coast line from Great White's as the waters in the area are those of the cold Atlantic ocean, so I didn't see any single flippered seals swimming around in circles, freaking out their whole families.
(Pause for acknowledgement of Arrested Development joke... and continuing on)

They were pretty impressive on this island, loads of them everywhere with lots of pups wandering around. The pups looked like black lab puppies with flippers. We get lots of penguins that come in with seal bites, so I think it was good for me to see them up close - takes some of the villany out of them. The birds with seal bites are also usually the most cantankerous of the birds. You can hardly blame them, because they've either got huge gouges in their abdomens or wounds on their feet, but man, they are not fun to handle.

From Hout Bay we cut eastward across the peninsula towards Muzienberg and headed south down the coast of False Bay towards Boulder Beach. There's a large penguin colony here.


The guy with the pink spot and metal arm band is a SANCOB release bird. They mark all the released birds in this manner. It was pretty cool to see all of these adult birds out in their natural colony. We don't generally see a lot of adult birds at work, other than the occasional injured bird or home pen bird. It's a lot of blues.

After this and lunch, we headed down to the most south-western point of the continent of Africa. There was much confusion over this title and spent about 10 minutes in the bus trying to follow the clarification that yes, it was the most southern point of the continent, but not the most western, but of the southern points the most western (wrap your brain around that). We finally exited the bus and took some photos and wandered around a bit. There was a great lighthouse over looking a peak where we took some of the following photos.


The girls I took the tour with - other AVIVA volunteers and in the center our awesome tour guide, Ursula.

Myself, House-mate Constance, and fellow volunteer, Vicky, goofing around on the Cape of Good Hope Sign.
Standing at the bottom of the Africa, windswept, sun-ripened, and incapable of smiling like a normal person.

By this point, we were knackered, as some of the volunteers from the UK would say, and piled back into the van to head home. Those of us that didn't sleep on the drive back were in bed by 9:30 PM. I haven't consistently gone to bed so early since I was probably in elementary school. By 10 PM, our house is dead silent. We're all just wiped out from volunteering.

Things will be crazy during this next week, with Christmas holidays and the penguins and all, but there is a 417, 474 (my two stumpy enemies that have joined forces - seriously) and my new favorite tiny bird, 489, who weighs less than a kg, post a-brewin'. I'll also have an update on 487 and some of my other faves before the New Year.

Until then, Happy Holidays!! Enjoy the snow, suckers!

Heaps of adorable pictures!

I've been in the hot sun, working all day with the ICU birds (the birds that need the most care and are the sickest/injured) and I'm half way through my 6 straight days of working. Rather than ramble on about my new enemy, 417, I'm just going to post pictures. But I've got a good rant brewing for my next post. That bird is a real jerk. He's got to have his foot amputated, so I can't really blame him for wanting to attack anything that comes within a half a foot radius of him.

But I digress - penguins! Adorable penguins!!



If you look closely, you can see the little rivulets of water coming off his tummy. Yes, I said tummy. Adorable things have tummy's, not stomachs.

Coming in from the Pen 10 pool, looking like he (or she) owns the place


This one is in mid-fluff. After they get out of the water, the birds will scrunch their bodies into a tight ball and then fluff all their feathers up and shake. I believe this gets the excess water off their skin and out of their plummage.
I got to chase these guys around while the pool was draining. It was a ridiculous amount of fun. I was splashing and laughing like an idiot while I chased them. I'm grinning now, just thinking about it.


Chubs a bit further along in his molting. Still a fatty, not quite as much of a feather ball.

I love this bird, and I love this photo. I think he was nosing around looking for fish. When some of the birds are really hungry, they'll come right up to you and make a high pitched trilling sound demanding fish. It's really funny and adorable.

This little guy was very perplexed by my camera.




These are their claws. They're also the culprits behind my fun new forearm scars. I've only forgotten arm guards twice, but I'll have the memories for life. Or at least until the scars fade.

And lastly, the view of table mountain from SANCOB. Complete with cloud coverage known as the table cloth.

SHARKS!!!

Taken from the top of the boat... that's a GREAT WHITE SHARK eating the crap out of that tuna bait!

Great White Shark cage diving was AWESOME. I went with three other volunteers. They picked us up at 4:15 AM, and I slept the entire way to Gansbaai. I'm told it was about a two hour drive from Cape Town. We went with a company called White Shark Projects. They're heavily involved in conservation and keeping track of the declining Great White Shark numbers in the area. More on that later.

In the area, there are a bunch of different companies that also do cage diving with great whites. As luck may have it, we picked the right company to go with that day, as our boat saw NINE great whites, and at least 3 other boats saw nothing. And you don't get refunds.


We got on the boat, and went out about 20 minutes on the water. In the summer months, the sharks spend more time in shallower water, as the ocean is actually colder in South Africa during the summer. In the winter, the boats head out to deeper water between Dyer Island and Seal Island. Dyer Island houses a colony of penguins, and we often get a lot of injured birds from there. As soon as they dropped anchor, we immediately heard the call for us to get into our wetsuits as quickly as possible, as they were already attracting sharks. They chummed the water with anchovy oil and a huge chunk of tuna.

Five of us threw our wetsuits, goggles, and weight belts on as fast as we could, and jumped into the cage. Within minutes, we saw our first shark from under the water. We had an underwater camera, but we were way to excited to use it. The visibility wasn't that great in the water, so I don't know if pictures would've turned out that great either. So, no pics of that.

But rest assured, after EVERY shark swam by, or made a lunge for the bait, I held my breath for as long as I possibly could to watch them until they disappeared into the murky water, then propelled to the top of the cage, and loudly proclaimed how awesome it was. Every time. I was pretty much the only person talking. But damn, I was excited.

The cage is in the bottom right of the photo. The sharks came so close you could touch them. However, this was not advisable, especially if you enjoy having limbs.

Okay, so the water was about 11 C (which I think is like... 45 F? 50?) Either way, it was COLD! But so worth it. The sharks got so close you could see their gills moving, the texture and details on their skin, and their massive, massive teeth and jaws. I couldn't tell you how long we were in the cage for, the time FLEW by. We saw 6 sharks total during that first run alone. A second group went in, which is when I went up top and got these pictures. After they got out, I got back in with a couple of others and we saw three additional sharks. The biggest shark we saw was about 10 feet long - and those aren't even up to breeding size. Apparently, Great Whites can't even mate until they're at least 15 ft long.

It was so incredible to see these massive creatures in their natural habitat. There's predictions that as soon as 10/15 years from now, Great Whites could be extinct. A main issue is the illegal fishing and trade of their fins and jaws. A set of Great White jaws can get anywhere from 65,000 USD - 100,000 USD. It made me sad to think that there's a chance that was the first and last time I'll ever see one up close.

UPDATE:
Apparently, as I slept, Anderson Cooper has one-upped me. Can't hate him though, I love that silver fox.
And thanks to everyone who pointed it out.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/12/11/pip.shark.diving/index.html

Chicks! And Pictures!

These are the chicks I've been working with for the last couple of days. It was about 95 degrees in the sun this day, so they are some seriously hot chicks. 

Ah! There's so much to write about! Firstly, I absolutely love South Africa and working with the penguins. I've completely gotten past my initial trepidation and feel super comfortable with the birds. I'm starting to get their schedules down, which is a big triumph because there is ALWAYS something that needs doing. In mastering that, I feel like you get a totally different feel for the place, and it doesn't feel like such a mad house. 

I've spent the last 3 days of work in Pen 2 and with the chicks. It's been a ton of fun, despite it being insanely hot. You work in oilskins - big, plastic coveralls - that don't let any air in, so by the end of the days my jeans feel like they came out of the washing machine. Drenched with sweat. Totally gross, I know.

I won't spend a lot of time typing about what I've been up to - I'd rather post a bunch of photos. So here goes!

 

Looking sweaty and gross in Pen 10

Affectionately refer to this guy at Chubs, or Tubbs. He's molting.

I LOVE this guy! 487 - he came in on Friday. He's got real moxy. He's definitely my favorite, even though he is NOT a big fan of me. Seconds after this photo was taken, he came very close to eating my fingers.

These are a couple of the chicks. They're almost blues (juveniles). You can tell because they're losing their fuzz and growing in real feathers. They're super soft to the touch and you have to wear special pants when you work with them, because they can't touch the oilskins. It damages their plumage. 
Two blues in Pen 10 pecking away at each other. I broke them up shortly after this photo.

The guys with the red bands are ready for release.

Okay, so that wasn't quite as many as I would've liked to post. I swear, I'll get the internet thing figured out soon enough. I will have another couple of posts soon, about baboons and shark diving!

Cultural Tour Day!

The interior of an herbal healers shop in the township of Lana

Today was my cultural tour day. I spent the day going around to three of the different townships in the Cape Town area. We started the day off with a stop at the District 6 museum. District 6 was an area of Cape Town that housed blacks, coloureds, and cape malays (using the terms they use) before an an act during the apartheid era (sometime in the '60's) that forcibly relocated the people in the community.  Since the end of apartheid, the South African government has given areas of the land back to some of the original residence of district 6, and they're rebuilding the area. It's slow going however, and this is what the area looked like today:

This was once a bustling road. Now it's a dirt track with a few remnants of bricks that used to pave it.

We then toured around the townships and got to interact with some of the people. We stopped at a B&B, Vicky's, that's world renowned. It was kind of crazy as it was right smack dab in the middle of these shanty homes, and it was a very nice B&B. The people in the area and Vicky, the owner, were really friendly and awesome. There was a krish, a day care center, in the back and we stopped in and hung out with the kids for a bit. I brought my video camera and turned the LCD screen around so they could see themselves, check out their reactions. They were so excited to have visitors! Apparently it was less packed than usual, as most of the kids are on holiday. You can see the size of the room, and there are normally 70 kids in there. (I had to make it super tiny to make it upload, I'll get to an internet cafe at some point while I'm here and post a hi-rez version)

- (The video is SERIOUSLY not working... I will try again soon, trust me its worth it, they're adorable)

A lot of these townships offer their communities support through arts centers. Basically, they take a segment of the population, usually women, have them come into the arts center and teach them skills like pottery and weaving. They then sell these goods and the money goes back into the community, and in some cases they offer child care. I ended up buying a hand crafted mug and a hand weaved bag from two separate places. 

That's all I've got for now. I've got some more penguin stories to share that I'll get uploaded this week - WITH PICTURES! and hopefully some video! I finally worked in Pen 10 and helped wrangle Lionel. More to come!