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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

We finished the day at the town dump, where three species of Caracara, gulls and hawks were abundant.

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.

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:

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.

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.

This was also our first real penguin colony to visit, with both Gentoo and Magellanic Penguins on nests.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I spent the morning wandering around Ushuaia, birded a little, then flew to Buenos Aires.

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.

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.