After seven days in the subantarctic, I’m back on the Poor Knights islands. It’s Northland warm, still and sunny, Shag bay turquoise and calm. The storms of December ripped through me and left me chilled and exhausted, working all night with nocturnal birds, and then most of the day in a makeshift field laboratory under a snapping tarpaulin. I wore out quickly, snatching naps in my hammock and reading ebooks on my phone to keep me awake during the night shifts. It’s so different now, the kind of weather I’d come to expect from my first season working out here. Flat water, long afternoons. Golden evening light. Nothing like the thunderstorms and hail, the tarp-tearing winds of the past two years. It’s dream-like, as it was that first time.