Friday 30 December 2016

South Georgia

On 26th November we landed at Salisbury Plain in the Bay of Isles on the north coast of the island - over three days we visited a number of sites as we headed south east along the coast ...


... the hazards of walking through the tussock grass were revealed ...


... sleeping Fur Seals can look very much like a good stepping stone.

Huge numbers of King Penguins breed here - flat ground is a scarce commodity on the island ...



... the one year old juveniles were just starting to moult out of that plumage ...


... the beach is often a crowded place ...


... so the King Penguin colony is situated up the beach and away from the main loafing area of the seals ...





... some of the penguins had started to lay eggs and Brown Skuas were always looking for a feeding opportunity ...




... a few South Georgia Pintails were present ... these have the distinction of, uniquely among ducks,  including dead seals in their diet.  Despite this they are now considered to be conspecific with Yellow-billed Pintail which we had seen earlier on Tierra del Fuego ...


South Georgia Pipit is the only regular passerine on the island and was until recently was present only on offshore islands free of rats.  Having previously had the designation - Near Threatened - its numbers are now increasing following a major rat eradication programme.  Some were performing display flights ...  



... and parachuting down to perch on tussock grass ...


Along the coast we started to encounter a few icebergs ...



At Fortuna Bay the King Penguin colony was more diffuse ...


... and the mist rolled down from the snow-clad mountains and produced a little snow ...

Heading south once again and some White-chinned Petrels came by ...


... and Snow Petrels began to be more frequent ...


Early the following day a pristine adult Grey-headed Albatross came close by ...


... and more Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses ...


... as we approached Grytviken the former whaling station with its rusting infrastructure became visible and Stromness Villa where Shackleton and his companions were welcomed by Thoralf Sorlle in 1916 stood out with its bleached timber walls.  The settlement was dwarfed by the vast landscape and the mountain ridge over which Shackleton walked to get help loomed over the site ...


Antarctic Terns lingered among the decaying structures before returning to their breeding colony up the hillside, safely away from the seals on the beach ...



... and a few South Georgia Pintails arrived ...



Heading yet further south along the coast and the following day saw us around Gold Harbour and Royal Bay with the promise of another penguin species ...


... the Macaroni Penguins were breeding along a section of coast which offered no landing possibilities for us as the rocks fell away to the sea ...


... more South Georgia Pipits fed on the wave-washed rocks ...


... and a South Georgia Cormorant posed nicely ...


... as did a Sheathbill fittingly on a block of ice ...


... and Kelp Gull is a striking bird easily ignored in the context of all the other species ...


Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses were flying in tandem across the high cliff faces and alighting on their nest ledges ...


... one bird calling to another with a strange haunting cry ...


Along the coast a landing beach gave us a chance to see Southern Giant Petrels ashore ...


... and a white morph individual on the sea ...


... and King Penguins along side an Elephant Seal gave a sense of scale ...


... while two posed together engagingly ...




































Thursday 29 December 2016

To South Georgia ...

After two days of going ashore we were raring to get back to the sea ... raring to head south ... and raring to cross the Scotia Sea and be out there on the bridge wing waiting to find ... well who knows what ?  ... that routine of scanning the ocean that fuels the promise of limitless expectation.

The bridge itself was an occasional haven and refuge from the falling temperatures on the wing ...


More Sooty Shearwaters passed by but in ever diminishing numbers ...



A Southern Giant Petrel came close by showing the greenish tip to the bill ...


... and Cape Petrels toyed with the disrupted winds around the ship ...


Ahead of us lay the fabled Antarctic Convergence where the sea temperature drops by around            5 deg C and creates upwelling which in turn produces the conditions favourable for producing an increase in plankton and so ... birds.
The other factor that we were constantly aware of was water depth ... were we over the continental shelf ?  Were we approaching an ocean ridge created by a subduction zone  resulting from tectonic plate activity where the sea was no longer 3,000 m deep but maybe 300 m deep ?  This might again produce more available food and perhaps be associated with cetacean activity which in turn could have potential benefits for seabird activity.  A visit to the bridge would always provide the information relating to sea temperature and water depth from the sophisticated instrumentation there.

Our first Light-mantled Sooty Albatross appeared - a species of astounding elegance and with wonderfully subtle velvety colour tones ...






... we would have more encounters with these birds on their breeding grounds ...


A juvenile Black-browed Albatross made a rare appearance - almost all individuals of this species that we saw were adult birds.  The darkish underwing and dark tip to the otherwise light grey bill showed well ...


Another juvenile albatross came by ...  this time a Grey-headed Albatross and another new species for me ...


... a very distinctive bird following on from the very many Black-broweds we had seen ...


... and sharing a similar underwing pattern.


Now that we were in the cold water zone the predominant prion was Antarctic Prion , with its darker head pattern, more extensive black on the tail tip and broader based more robust bill ...


...  we would encounter feeding flocks of these from time to time ...



The great albatrosses of the genus diomedea never fail to impress with their 2.5 - 3.5 m wingspan and this Wandering Albatross made several wide circles around the ship. This is another species associated with the cold water zone and less closely tied to the continental shelf than Southern Royal Albatross, the other member of the genus diomedea that we had become so familiar with.  This individual, in probably stage 3 plumage was still far from being adult ...




Another Southern Giant Petrel was on the sea.  This was a darker , younger bird but showed its greenish bill tip ...


... as it took off from the water.


Another cold water species that we began to encounter was Black-bellied Storm-Petrel which became quite common ...








Through the mist the Shag Rocks became perceptible and heralded our approach to South Georgia ...



... and gave a taste of the stark landscape which lay ahead.

A South Georgia Cormorant flew right overhead ...



A Northern Giant Petrel , now increasingly scarce as we headed south, put in an appearance showing its reddish tipped bill ...


... and small groups of 'porpoising' King Penguins made their way across the ocean ...



... and gave a taste of what lay in store ...