Meet George. He’s an Aldabra Giant Tortoise and is pictured above posing beside a helicopter (photo credit goes to my co-researcher Frank). When he was born helicopters were the stuff of science fiction. At a whopping 160 years (an estimate, since he’s outlived most of his human observers), he is one of the oldest living creatures on Earth.

My great, great, great grandparents were in nappies, or whatever was used back then, when George was born. Humanity was shaken by two World Wars, Elvis lived and died, Niall Armstrong bounced on the moon, the internet took off, Westmeath won a Leinster football final – and all the while George plodded around this rock in the Indian Ocean, in a world of his own.

From what I’ve seen his world is not a bad place to be. He has spent his entire long life in this tropical paradise munching on juicy fruits and servicing any young females who take his fancy, and they’re all young compared to him. To escape the heat of the day he often wanders down to the mud puddle in the middle of the island and bathes alongside some younger old friends. They’ve all got nothing to do and nearly an eternity to do it in. Live slow and die old is their motto.

He’s a very unusual animal to look at, more dinosaur than modern-day reptile really. He moves around like a Sherman Tank, heaving one heavy leg in front of the other, his long neck projecting outwards like a gun barrel. A thick leathery layer of skin, dappled with scales, covers his enormous body and holding this oddity of an animal together is a giant, solid shell known as a carapace.

Unfortunately for George this carapace is usually covered in bird poop – not the most dignified look for such an otherwise noble individual. However, he seems totally unaware of his predicament and plods around proudly, arrogantly even, a lumbering beacon of self-confidence. After 160 or so years I suppose ignorance well and truly is bliss in his case.

In other wildlife news, remember that nest I mentioned in the previous blog? Well the egg inside of it eventually hatched and out popped a little warbler chick. In order to monitor these birds we need to be able to tell them apart from each other and we do this by giving each of them a unique combination of coloured rings on their legs.

This chick was my very first one to ring so I had to give him some special colours to really mark the occasion, a sort of baptism for us both. I chose green, white and gold, of course, and he was nicknamed Paddy. There he is in the photo above showing off his new leg-bling. (The colours are in reverse because a bird’s rings are always read from behind) Hopefully Paddy will live on here as the Irish representative on the island long after I’ve left.

While I was doing my rounds checking on other nests I came across something very special on the forest floor – a tiny baby Giant Tortoise, a mini George. It was barely the size of George’s toenail and fitted into the palm of my hand like a heavy apple.

Probably no more than a couple of years old this little guy has, with a bit of luck, a very, very long future ahead of him. Perhaps many years from now when Paddy the warbler is long gone and when my great great great grandchildren are teleporting themselves to school he’ll be as big as George is now, following in his slow, steady footsteps.

Looking into his innocent eyes I tried to imagine what sort of a world they’d see a century from now. I just hope for his sake and for the sake of mankind there’ll still be tortoises roaming around freely, covered in bird poop, without a care in the world.