Tag: antarctica

The Bird Banter Podcast #143: Antarctica Additional Info.


I will make this unusually brief, as I wrote a full trip report under the Ed’s birding notes tab of this page. See lots of photos on my Antarctica Flickr album.
Stay tuned for the next Bird Banter episode with George Armistad. I hope have several upcoming episode with fellow birders I met on the trip.
The ABA was a main driver behind filling a ship with birders for a birding focused expedition cruise, which added greatly to the focus and fellowship on the ship.
For me one of the best parts of the trip was meeting Alvaro Jaramillo, and spending time with him and his co-leader Ricardo Matus. Both are not just extremely accomplished birders and guides, but have a fabulous depth of knowledge about the bird world. Alvaros lecture on the likely new species split from Wilson’s Storm-petrel was great, but all trip we got to learn life history and exquisite details of innumerable topics. Super fun to be around Alvaro and Ricardo.

Rockjumper Birding was the organizer and primary birding tour managers, and did a fine job.

If all goes as planned my next episode will be a talk with one of the top guides on the trip, and fellow podcaster George Armistad.  Follow his podcst (along with Alvaro Jaramillo and Mollee Brown) Life List: A Birding Podcast

Until next time, good birding and good day.

Antarctica Trip Report

I look back at the Ocean Diamond from shore at a Gentoo Penguin Colony

Going to Antarctica was undoubtedly a trip of a lifetime, and memories both fabulous and not so great. I remember as a child my Dad’s older brother Uncle Deck and his family used to visit camp in the summer for his month of leave from the Marine Corps. Uncle Deck was always clean shaved, had short hair and totally looking like a military officer. I remember one summer when he came he had a big beard, long hair and was on leave from a multiple-year assignment as the logistics officer at a base in Antarctica, where the military grooming rules were overlooked. I’d always thought I’d like to see this place so wild even the Marine Corps had to give it respect.
This is a shipwreck at Andvord Bay–Neko Harbor, where Antarctic Terns were nesting on the wreck, Snow Petrels circled overhead, and it made me think about the incredible power and wildness of this continent. Here we are in the far northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is at about -64.844587 degrees South latitude, so think how far the South Pole is from here, the farthest south place relatively accessible to an expedition cruise.

To skip the reading, and just see photos, here is a Flickr Album Link
I had planned and arranged a trip to Antarctica that was supposed to leave in Nov 2020, but due to Covid travel issues was postponed until 2021, and again until this November. It was a special expedition cruise on throuogh Quark Expeditions, with essentially all of the passengers birders (along with some photographers). After a 2-day, approximately 36 hour trip to Ushuaia via Houston and Buenos Aires on United Airlines and Aerolineas Argentina, I arrived in Ushuaia in time to meet a group arranged by Alvaro Jaramillo (a previous guest on episode #16) for dinner at Los Cauquenes resort. After dinner, and some much needed sleep, we met the next morning for the first of 2 days of birding near Ushuaia on a pre-cruise mini-trip. The first day we went to PN Tierra del Fuego, along with two local guides, Alvaro and our other primary trip guide, Ricardo Matus. As an aside, Alvaro is a prolific on Facebook, and somewhat like Dennis Paulson posts really great background information on the photos and topics he posts. I recommend his as a follow on Facebook. Guaranteed you’ll learn something.

Overall it was a nice day to get feet on the ground, see some Argentinian birds, and get to know some of the other birders in Alvaro’s group. I think about 25 of the cruise’s +/- 175 passengers were signed up through Alvaro. Here are a few photos from the park.
Highly sexually dimprphic Upland Geese were very tame and all over the place. The white one is the male.

Everywhere needs their local Turdus thrush, and the one for this trip was the Austral Thrush Turdus falcklandii

Steemer ducks are a far south specialty. You can tell this male and female are Flightless Steamer Ducks because both the male and female have bright orange bills.

Thorn-tailed Rayadito

Maybe muy favorite, Tufted Tit-Tyrant.

We finished the day at the park with 31 species, including several soaring Andean Condors and the very common Chimango Caradara. We saw several Magellanic Woodpeckers, but all were distant obstructed views without decent photos by me.
Andean Condor

The Chimango Caracara fills the nice of the crows around home, seeming to be the scavanger of everything edible.

We got home well before dinnertime, and a walk on the shore of the Beagle Canal gave great looks at lots of other birds too.
Black-faced Ibis

Southern Lapwing

On the second day of birding we went to a local ski slope, Glaciar Martial, and had a beautiful walk up a road and trail at higher elevation for different birds. Highlights included:
A specialty of the area was Yellow-bridled Finch.

Buff-winged Cincloides

Ochre-naped Ground Tyrant

We finished the day at the town dump, where three species of Caracara, gulls and hawks were abundant.
Black-chested Buzzard-eagle

White-throated Caracara


White-throated Caracara with Chimango Caracara

After another walk on the beach before dinner, it was finally time to sleep, get up and wait for the cruise the next afternoon. Ushuaia is a port town, that is often inaccurately called the southern-most city in the world. It is not even the southernmost city in South America, as there are Chilean cities on the other side of the Beagle Channel, but it is pretty damn far south. It has a booming tourist industry for cruise ship passengers both stopping for the day on passing cruise ships, and people coming or going on cruses based at the port there.
After finally getting on the Ocean Diamond, having our safety briefing, practicing getting on our life jackets, etc. we were ready to depart at dinnertime, except a strong wind pushed the ship so hard against the pier that we had to wait several hours to be able to push off. Finally, just as dark arrived, we were underway.
Demonstrating competence in donning a lifejacket in the lifeboat safety drill.

There was little birding on the first night as darkness came shortly after we were underway. I was lucky to have a known roomie, Eric Dudley, a local birder, friend and excellent roommate for the trip. Our first two days were traveling to the Falkland Islands, which are north and east of Ushuaia. I was trying to spend as much time as possible on deck birding and there were lots of new seabirds to see:

The most prevalant albatross of the trip, Black-browed Albatross, a mid-sized albatross in the “mollyhawk” group was nearly constantly in sight.

Giant Petrels, at this point all Southern Giant-petrels were almost always trailing the ship. They are about the size of the Black-browed Albatross, and come in many colors, apparently lighter as they age.

White-chinned Petrels were essentially all black with a white bill, and pretty easy to ID as they are really large, seem to fly slowly and really dwarf most of the other petrels.

We saw our first Prions, Slender-billed Prions. For much of the trip Prions were seen, often in awesone numbers.

One of our first “great” albatrosses was this Northern Royal Albatross.

Can you pick the White-chinned Petrel from this flock of Sooty Shearwaters?

We settled into the routine on the ship. For me usually up about 5 AM, a bit of time on deck then a buffet breakfast about 7-7:30, more birding from the deck on days at sea intermixed with lectures by several of the staff experts. Lunch again a buffet from 12:30-2, more birding, tea in the bar at 4 PM (nothing vegan and I generally skipped this when birding was good) then dinner was a set-down dinner aboiut 7 PM. Usually there was a review of the day and discussion of the day to come about 6 PM in the main lecture hall on deck 5, and Alvaro’s group usually did a check list after this before dinner. The day ended with the Rockjumper group doing a checklist about 9 PM, and after the first day or two I skipped this as Alvaro did all of our e-Birding and we had already done our own checklist. I usually was in bed by 9-10 PM, though a few times I attended the bar-talk in the bar on deck 4 at 9 PM. Usually I was just too tired.
Day 2 at sea we approached the Falklands.
We started to see Cape Petrels, which for the rest of the trip were almost certainly the most common Petrel to be seen. They are commonly known by their Spanish name, Pintado Petrel for “painted”.

Imperial Shag (or Cormorant depending on which name you prefer)

On the third day we took two Zodiac trips to Carcass Island and West Point Island. It was super cool to experience my first Zodiac landings. Birding was great, and we managed essentially all fo the endemics of the Falklands.
The easy one by far was Blackish Cincloides, so tame they literally walk on your boots.

Cobb’s Wren has a cool back-story, as for years it was considered a subspecies of House Wren, was described as a likely separate species long before it was split.

Silver Teal

White-bridled Finch – the more yellowish Falkland subspecies.

Kelp Geese (Male is the white one)

This was also our first real penguin colony to visit, with both Gentoo and Magellanic Penguins on nests.
As you can see Gentoo Penguins nest in burrows.

At the second Zodiac landing of the day we visited West Point Island. The highlight here was a Southern Rockhopper Penguin and Black-browed Albatross colony. It was up a remarkably steep rocky cliff, and the two species seem to live in a close proximity. The theory is that the Albatross keep parasitic Brown Skua away from the penguin nests. This must make it worth it for the penguins to literally hop from rock to rock to get far from shore to the colony. The albatross nests are super cool. They are reused year after year with a fresh layer of mud each year, so that some of them seem like very tall silos.
Black-browed Albatross on a nest.

A small segment of the huge colony of Southern Rockhopper Penguins
A small part of the Southern Rockhopper Penguin and Black-browed Albatross colony.

On our second and last day in the Falklands, we visited Stanley. It was a cool stop for many reasons. The birding was great, and after a far too long of a walk from Stanley to Gypsy Cove (in total the expedition staff of the Ocean Diamond was terrific, but on this landing they said that the walk from Stanley to Gypsy Cove was about 45 minutes, and a good walking option. I chose to walk after missing the first bus, and a long, dusty, nearly 2-hour power walk later I got to the cove just in time to race around to find the target birds and catch the last bus back to town.) Despite that I managed to get the three hoped for species near Gypsy Cove.

Male Two-banded Plover

Female Two-banded Plover

Long-tailed Meadowlark was a crowd favorite.

Brown-hooded Gull

As I walked out of town I passed this memorial art installation near the cemetery for those killed in the Falklands War.

On an old wreck was a pair of Blackish Oystercatchers.

At the end of the time in Stanley I got to visit town for a few minutes. Then back to the ship and off on the 3-day voyage to South Georgia. This was the last time I was to be free on the ship for the next 5 days as that night I became feverish, had severe cough and headache, and the next morning was tested positive for Covid-19. Note-to-self: An expedition cruise ship is a lousy place to be confined to your cabin for 5 days.
As the result of this I missed all of the days where there were shore visits on South Georgia, as well as most of the time outside on the crossing to get there. I had meals in the room, Eric was a trooper as there was no other place to put him, so he was forced to also eat in the room and wear a mask at all times, though he tested negative.
Missed experiences at South Georgia included visits to major King Penguin colonies, walks and hikes ashore, a Zodiac cruise to visit a Macaroni Penguin colony and a visit to a Gray-headed Albatross colony. Thankfully I was not terribly ill, though for 2-3 days I was moderately ill, and really belonged in my room anyway.

A photo of the King Penguin colony taken by a shipmate who got to visit shore.

We did get “jail-breaks” once or twice a day, where the ship’s medical and housekeeping staff cleared hallways and those of us in isolation got up on the 8th observation deck to get some air and to see where the Zodiacs were going.
A view from the boat at one of the visit sites.

We did get closeup looks at Snowy Sheathbill on most of these deckside visits.

Finally, after my 5-day quarantine, on the morning after leaving South Georgia, on the start of a 3-day crossing to the Antarctic Peninsula, I got freed to be out on the ship. Things had changed a lot. Everyone was wearing a mask due to the high prevalence of Covid, and many of the participants were spending less time on deck than on the first crossing when the novelty was higher and the birds were all new. I was out as much as I could, though my energy remained low, and I had to take frequent breaks.
The three day crossing was most notable for huge numbers of Prions, mostly Antarctic Prions, with good numbers of Blue Petrels (grouped with the Prions), and at least one Fairy Prion reportedly seen by others.
An Antarctic Prion. There were at times flocks of possibly 100,000 of these swirling and soaring in massive displays.

Blue Petrel, looking a lot like the other Prions, but with a white tip on the tail, a bold black cap and shoulder marking, and overall being slightly larger and more solid appearing in flight.

On the second day we cruised past the largest iceberg currently in the world, A76a. The designation means it is from the “A” quadrant of Antarctica, and was the 76th major tabular iceberg from that quadrant in the age of satellite monitoring. After this gigantic iceberg broke off in Nov 2021, it broke into three major pieces, and the “a” fragment was the largest, and the one we passed. It is about 75 miles long and 18 miles wide. It is about 25 meters above the water surface, and about 9x as much below, so maybe 750 or more feet in total depth. It was awesome. We saw about half of it as for the first half of passing it was obscured by fog.
A76a

At times massive flocks of seabirds, mostly Antarctic Prions, was swarming near the iceberg and the experts told us that they were feeding on krill that died in large numbers from the fresh water melting off the iceberg.
We continued on toward Antarctica, with really more of the same types of species. As we appoached the peninsula we entered the Weddell Sea, and expected ice to block passage toward a known Emperor Penguin breeding colony many miles from where we expected to be blocked by sea ice. The winds were in our favor though as we approached, and we just kept slowly progressing as the ice became more and more, but the captain kept finding ways to keep going. We were all on deck, looking at every iceberg hoping to see an Emperor Penguin pulled out on the ice. For several hours there was no sightings, and about 8:45, as the light started to become dimmer, and as my energy flagged, I called it a day and retreated to the cabin. Just as I got into bed the call went out on the ships intercom that Emperor Penguins had been sighted, and I quickly jumped back into warm clothes and hurried on deck. Sure enough, in the distance we could see a pair of Emperors standing on the ice. The ship kept slowly getting closer, and we were all super excited about the penguins when a pair of Antarctic Petrels zoomed towards the ship and gave a great show zipping around overhead.
The Emperor Penguins were the most hoped for bird of the trip, and it was great to see them, but for me the Antarctic Petrel show stole the moment.

These Antarctic Petrels were so fast, and zipping so close to the boat that most of my photos are of just part of the birds.



Along with the penguins, these are two of the southernmost breeding birds in the world. A fabulous thrill and experience.
We made a number of Zodiac shore stops around the peninsula. Included were Paulet Island, Wilhelmina Bay, Neko Harbor, Andvord Bay, Georges Island, and Halfmoon Island. We saw Chinstrap, Gentoo and Adelie Penguin colonies, got great looks and studies of Brown and South Polar Skuas, saw an area called the Iceberg Graveyard where icebergs get blown onto gravel bars and are stranded, too many beautiful cliffs, mountains, glaciers and seascapes to try to talk about separately. I’ll just include some photos with captions.
These Adelie Penguin were at Paulet Island, where a colony estimated at >15,000 was visited. The Adelie penguin is named after the wife of Jules Dumont d’Urville, Adéle. It is the classic black-and-white penguin.

Adelie Penguin

The Light-mantled Albatross was the favorite of most of the birders, but I thought this Gray-headed Albatross was pretty tough to beat.
Light-mantled Albatross

Chinstrap Penguin

Gentoo Penguin
The ice was really a star of the show.
Icebergs came in every size and shape.
Imperial Cormorant, a.k.a. Rock Shag.
King Penguins for much of the middle part of the cruise were seemingly everywhere.

Snow Petrel were one of the species I most wanted to see, and they did not dissappoint.

On several of the Zodiac Cruises we had nice Humbpack Whale encounters. Many times the whales were just lounging near the surface, but sometimes they dove and gave a nice fluke show.

Another Humpback Whale. We were early in the season and there were really surprisingly few whale encounters.
The ice was really a star of the show.

Icebergs came in every size and shape.
Gentoo Penguin

Chinstrap Penguin

After three fabulous days around the Antarctic Peninsula we headed north back to Ushuaia. For a while we stayed sheltered behind an island, but soon were into the Drake Passage. This is a place famous for big wind and waves. It can be called the “Drake Lake” when the winds die down, but for us was definately the “Drake Shake.” I was concerned about sea sickness, but had no problems at all, despite up to 7 meter swells, huge wind waves with sustained winds at 50-60 knots/hr. The “one hand for the boat” rule definately applied, and the forward decks were closed, but it was very exciting, and we were back in the space of the “great albatrosses.” Wandering Albatross and Southern and Northern Royal Albatrosses forage in these winds. They collectively are what were referred to as the “”white-backed” albatrosses. They are difficult to identify as to species, because all of them get more white feathers on their back and wings as they age, but are easy to tell from the mid-sized albatrosses. They just lumber through the air, essentially never flapping, and seeming to love the big seas and wind. Their movements are much slower and more deliberate than the smaller species.
Southern Royal Albatross

Wandering Albatross
Northern Royal Albatross

After a while I stopped stressing over the ID of these great albatrosses, and just marvelled at them. I don’t think I ever saw one flap their wings. The Wandering Albatross is said to have the longest wingspan of any living bird species, over 11 feet!
As we reentered the Beagle Channel I was up early with a few other birders hoping for a Magellanic Diving Petrel. No luck, but the early morning scenery was fabulous.

Magellanic Penguins with a Kelp Gull in early morning light.

This Kelp Gull drifted in the breeze just over the ship’s communication antennae before sunrise.

I spent the morning wandering around Ushuaia, birded a little, then flew to Buenos Aires.
Some species are perfectly named, like this Chalk-browed Mockingbird. It sings a lot like our Northern Mockingbird but IMO has a smaller repetoire.

Another properly named species was Spot-winged Pigeon.

Rufous Hornero

I spent the night at a hotel near the airport, the morning exploring and birding in a neighborhood city park, and then got home via a really long flight to Houston then to Seatac. Marian picked up Eric and me after 2 hours on the runway awaiting the plane at the gate to be de-iced. Finally home safely by mid afternoon.
The trip totals:
Exactly 99 lifers. The last 6 in Buenos Aires on the day after the cruise.
Antarctica: 28 species (one missed was Common Diving Petrel, seen by relatively few observers)
Falkland Islands: 50 species
South Georgia Islands: 25 species, remarkably despite missing all of the landings with Covid quarantine, on the brief on-deck excapes and from my window I saw all but South Georgia Pipit!
High Seas: 15 species
Argentina: 74 species
Favorite Bird: This is tough, but probably Black-bellied Storm Petrel.

Black-bellied Storm-petrel.

An unusual behavior of the Black-bellied Storm-petrel is that it spashed the surface with it’s belly flying just over the water.

Well, I’m home safely, rested enough to write this trip report, have already chased two new WA lifers, and am almost fully recovered from Covid. A great trip full of memories and experiences.