This year’s bird-themed Christmas cake celebrates albatrosses. Having failed once again to persuade my wife of my first choice of cake (an Ivory Gull on a freshly killed seal, think red, think white!), the cake this year is inspired by the Mouse-free Marion Project. Funds are being raised to eradicate introduced mice from Marion Island, which have developed a taste for seabird chicks, which they eat alive. This predation is seriously impacting the populations of the many albatross and petrel species that breed on this sub-Antarctic island.
The cake was made using a Nigel Slater recipe and the albatross skimming over the top of the cake was made from modelling clay and then painted with acrylics. The albatross is a Tristan Albatross, based on the bird on the front cover of the second edition of Peter Harrison’s “Seabirds”. This mature male plumage is one of the few that can be distinguished in the field from the more numerous Snowy Albatrosses, which breed on Marion Island. I’m no artist, but I think it is identifiable!
Happy Christmas to all and let’s all try to avoid being eaten alive by mice!