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Snow petrels are one of the few birds that spend their entire lives in Antarctica. Little is known about the snow petrel, especially their nesting and breeding habits. The first phase of the project was to find out how many and why snow petrels nested in particular areas. I spent a few months scrambling in the remote Windmill Islands (Casey area). I systematically searched large areas and I marked nests on the GPS along with other details of the habitat – such as whether it was on a slope, what kind of rock it was on, the size of the nest and rocks, what vegetation was around, any snow cover and also any permanent ice cover. The idea was to see if there was a link between distribution of the nests and the geomorphology of the area, wind conditions, etc.. Once I had acquired all this information in the field - I put together a spatial habitat model. (Maybe I should explain what this is in simple terms but not here!). I wanted to find out whether I could use this model to predict where the snow petrels nested across the whole of the East Antarctic region. Most of the area is inaccessible so it is really hard to estimate how many breeding pairs there are. By looking at the nesting habits of these birds I may also be able to predict how climate change might affect them locally. If more snow falls or more ice forms over the rocky slopes, the snow petrels might not be able to dig down into their nests. This could affect their reproductive success and climate change could have an effect on where they breed in the future.