Here’s the story behind the photo – my finalist image in this year New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year Awards.

I’m sitting on top of a cliff, looking west to where the sun has just set. Chill winds are tearing through the darkening sky – it’s winter, and the sea breezes hold none of their summer warmth. I’m rugged up but sweat-soaked, because the hike to where we’re now perched is a clenching clamber across a yawing chasm, with nothing but the sea far below. The northern headland of Pokohinu – Burgess Island, has always been cut off from the rest by this gap, bridged only by a narrow tongue of crumbly rock. Which is why, of the whole pest-free island, this particular spot is seabird central. Without the pressure of grazing cattle, the soil has always been the springy, loamy dirt that burrow-nesting birds can get their claws into. The rest of the island is slowly recovering, but this spot is prime real estate for petrels of all shapes and sizes.

Tonight, we’re on a mission. We’re here to get blood samples from the birds as part of an annual colony health check-up. Our targets are Grey-faced petrels and Northern diving petrels, and as the stars begin to wink through the dusky blue, the first calls signal their arrival. The whistling, crooning ‘ooooor-whik!’ of the Grey-faced petrels is first. In ones and twos, then tens and twenties, then hundreds and hundreds more of these beautiful dark birds come soaring in from the sea.

I have a soft spot for these birds. My Master’s research focused on comparing the health of different populations of Grey-faced petrels around the Auckland region. I’ve spent a year following their lives, and to be here surrounded by them is a thrilling experience. For once, though, I don’t have my hands full of bird, because we’re waiting for the diving petrels to arrive – and I’m free for a brief spell to take some photos. I’m lucky to have a supervisor who understands the importance of visual imagery for science communication – and its importance to me. So my tripod is set up, and the birds are streaming past.

Grey-faced petrel are quirky birds – they absolutely love a particular sound that we call ‘war-whooping’. It’s been described as ice-cream for petrels (or hard drugs, take your pick), and it helps us attract birds when we need to work with them. So with a little help from the team, I’m war-whooping into the night air, watching for the fleeting shadows of petrels skimming the clifftop. When they’re close enough, and I think they’re in the frame, I send out a few puffs of flash to freeze them in flight.

There are a lot of misses, a few hits, and this is one of them. But I don’t know that until much, much later. After less than ten minutes of trial and error, the purring call of a Northern diving petrel cuts through the cacophony of Grey-faced petrels. It’s all hands on deck now – we need as many samples as we can get from these birds, and I have to put the photography aside and focus on my job – the science. It’s a flurry. There are birds everywhere, the sky is full of their calls and the rush of their wings in the wind. In a circle of headlamp-light, I’m cradling birds in my lap, weighing and measuring, taking small samples of blood, marking and releasing them. We work methodically, a measured calm in the chaos. And all too soon, we’re done. It’s time to go, to make the hike back across the chasm in the dark, to head back to our field lab and process the blood samples, to retire for the night to our sleeping-bags in a hut with the stars blazing overhead and whistling shadows alive in the air.

Halfway back, standing on the very middle of the rock tongue with darkness concealing the drop below, we stop and listen to the throb of life that is Burgess island at night. Seabirds in their thousands, calling, circling, skimming the sea cliffs and scurrying into sculpted burrows. A wilderness, not untouched, but recovering. In the darkness, I contemplate light – an essential ingredient in photography. So much of my work happens in the dark that I wonder how I can ever capture the essence of it in a photograph.

The hike back is sweaty, and the precise pipetting and careful centrifuging the samples require is exhausting. But we finish it all, because that’s the work, and the work can’t wait. By the time we’re done I’m heavy-eyed, but find the energy flick through the images on the back of my camera quickly. There are a lot of misses. A lot. By there’s one or two that capture the feel of being there – and they’re pretty sharp. The most powerful photos for me are ones that can boil memories down to a single moment, that capture the feelings and bring them flooding back – the blasting wind, the salt tang of the air, the sound of the birds and the sea, the stars all a-glitter in the inky sky. This is an evening that I never want to forget.

I’ve been all over the place this year. It is amazing and exhausting, and that is why, despite my best intentions, this blog has been largely neglected. This is one of my most cherished memories from the #birdventurenz, from this year, from my life. You can read more about the science side of things here, in a blog I wrote for the Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust about our trip last year. But to be able to finally have an image that captures that memory for me is so rewarding. For others to enjoy it too, and to be able to share that experience, is a lovely bonus.

I’m off into the field again now, but there will be updates to come over the next few weeks and months.

I’ll see you soon.

Edin