The last trip report: West Point Island, rockhoppers, and albatrosses

The MS Roald Amundsen was supposed to sail about 8 p.m. last night, but apparently there’s been a delay, for the ship’s real-time map shows it still docked in Punta Arenas:

I suspect this has to do with a big misfortune yesterday. Before leaving the ship, I heard that, at the Punta Arenas airport, a group of armed robbers made off with over 350 pieces of luggage after hijacking a luggage van. And much of that luggage belonged to passengers arriving to board the Roald Amundsen for its next trip. I can imagine how awful it must feel to arrive with luggage full of warm clothes and stuff for Antarctica, only to have it all go missing. (I heard that some passengers packed valuables in their check-in luggage, too—always an unwise thing to do!)

Another rumor on the ship before I left was that the ship’s company would give each passenger $2000 and take them to a shopping mall to replace their things, and—although that offer would be about a half million dollars total—it’s probably not satisfactory to do last-minute shopping in a mall to replace lost luggage.

I don’t know what the outcome was, but the ship is still in port, having lost half a sea day already. I can’t find anything about this in the news, but I bet it’s the explanation for why the ship remains stationary and isn’t on its way to the Antarctic Peninsula. (The ship’s voyage today is scheduled to be a repeat of the last one I took.) Poor passengers! Lesson: always take carry-on luggage and check bags as infrequently as possible. I realized on this trip that I could have done that, but I checked a big duffle bag full of things I never used. And I wonder if this last trip will even take place. I think it must since not all passengers lost luggage.

But on to the final segment of my trip.

On Tuesday—our last day to engage in activities before we sailed back to South America—we visited West Point Island (population 2). Population 2? Yes, a man and his wife, apparently. Wikipedia says this:

West Point Island lies off the north-west point of West Falkland. It is 6 km (3.7 mi) long with a maximum width of 4 km (2.5 mi). Its dramatic west-facing cliffs are the highest in the Falklands, with the highest point at Cliff Mountain rising to 381 m (1,250 ft). West Point Island Settlement, with its 640 m (2,100 ft) airstrip, lies on Westpoint Cove in the north-east.

As with many locations around the Falkland Islands, in the early 19th century West Point was a popular site for slaughtering seals and penguins for oil. Literal overkill ended this industry in the area. The island was established as a sheep farm in 1879 by Arthur Felton, great uncle of Roddy Napier, the present owner.

Here’s where the island lies (red marker):

Below: a better map. We landed in the harbor by the settlement and then hiked west up Black Dog Hill to get a stupendous view of the albatross colony, where there also reside rockhopper penguins.

The island, though small and almost uninhabited, has a lot of sheep and, according to Wikipedia, is a tourist landmark. It’s the birds, of course!:

In February 1968, the late Lars-Eric Lindblad brought the Chilean government vessel Navarino to the Falklands with the first cruise tourists. This is widely recognized as the birth of Falklands tourism. The Navarino visited West Point Island and Mr. Lindblad started a long, close friendship with the Napier family. He also fell in love with their island and over the following 25 years helped turn it into one of the most popular cruise ship destinations outside the capital Port Stanley. Today West Point receives many expedition vessels every summer, their passengers taking Zodiacs and tenders ashore to explore this magnificent island. Large colonies of Black-browed albatrosses and Southern Rockhopper penguins, and the highest sea cliffs in the Falklands are the main attraction. Legendary West Point hospitality also awaits.

A hospitable greeting and a friendly d*g (remember, for posting all photos have been reduced in quality from about 3-5 mB to about 140 kB):

The hospitable Napiers had even put up the Norwegian flag in honor of the Roald Amundsen’s visit. They had also baked pastries and made tea, but I eschewed those in favor of lunch (see below):

On the landing pier we saw a pair of what I think are Falkland steamer ducks—the flightless ones—along with their six young ducklings. I couldn’t see that well due to fog and distance, but I believe this is the species with short wings, not its flying relative (the Fuegian steamer duck), for the wings in the adults below look small:

The buildings and farmhouse, planted around with gorse:

A striated caracara, which we also saw in yesterday’s post about Carcass Island. I’m not sure what the bare spot in the chest means (is it an egg in there?), as a bit of Googling turned up nothing. Readers are welcome to speculate or explain.

A rock with lichens:

An upland goose male with his goslings. We saw a female with goslings on Carcass Island, so it must be breeding season in the archipelago:

A cute, fluffy gosling stretching its leg:

There are many mosses on this wet island, and when I took the photo below I remembered Ezra Pound’s take Li Po’s Chinese poem “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.” It’s a poignant plea from a wife to her traveling husband, which contains these lines:

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me.

I grow older.

Below: an Austral thrush (Turdus falcklandii) stood beside the trail. The species comprises two subspecies, and Wikipedia notes this:

In Chile and Argentina the austral thrush lives in a variety of habitats from Nothofagus forests to agricultural lands and even gardens. On the Falkland Islands it makes use of human altered habitat as well but is most numerous in tussac grasses near beaches.

And. . . the trail ends at the sea with a view of the cliffs and the huge colony of black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophris) Here’s a panorama. (The cliff location gives the bird the necessary winds to take off and soar.)

From Wikipedia;

The black-browed albatross is circumpolar in the southern oceans, and it breeds on 12 islands throughout that range. In the Atlantic Ocean, it breeds on the Falkland Islands, Islas Diego Ramírez, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and Greenland during rare circumstances. In the Pacific Ocean it breeds on Islas Ildefonso, Diego de Almagro, Islas Evangelistas, Campbell Island, Antipodes Islands, Snares Islands, and Macquarie Island. In the Indian Ocean it breeds on the Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Islands, Heard Island, and McDonald Island.

There are an estimated 1,220,000 birds alive with 600,853 breeding pairs, as estimated by a 2005 count.

A non-panoramic view in the fog; the lower colony isn’t visible:

A closer view of the colony—and we were able to get really close. They seem to have each built a dirt nest, and were sitting on eggs. Again from Wikipedia:

This species normally nests on steep slopes covered with tussock grass and sometimes on cliffs; however, on the Falklands it nests on flat grassland on the coast. They are an annual breeder laying one egg from between 20 September and 1 November, although the Falklands, Crozet, and Kerguelen breeders lay about three weeks earlier. Incubation is done by both sexes and lasts 68 to 71 days. After hatching, the chicks take 120 to 130 days to fledge. Juveniles will return to the colony after two to three years but only to practice courtship rituals, as they start breeding around the 10th year.

There were no chicks, but the expedition team told me they saw eggs under the females when they shifted position.

They are beautiful birds with their black eye liner:

What a noble head and brow!

There was a rope around the colony so you couldn’t get too close to the birds, but this is how close you could get. This bird walked right up to the prone photographer shooting at the rope:

A panorama with amazed onlookers:

When I was standing roughly where the people above were, I asked a team member, “Where are the rockhopper penguins?” He said, “All over the place!” And then I looked carefully and found rockhopper penguins cunningly concealed among the rocks and albatrosses:

These are the smallest crested penguin, with a height of 45–58 cm (18–23 in) and weights of 2–3.4 kg (4.4–7.5 lb). And their taxonomy is confused. There is a northern rockhopper subspecies, and two subspecies of the Southern rockhopper penguin, which these surely are:

The rockhopper penguin complex is confusing. Many taxonomists consider all three rockhopper penguin forms subspecies. Some split the northern subspecies (moseleyi) from the southern forms (chrysocome and filholi). Still others consider all three distinct. The subspecies recognized for the southern rockhopper penguin complex are:

• • Eudyptes chrysocome chrysocome, the western rockhopper penguin or American southern rockhopper penguin – breeds around the southern tip of South America
  • Eudyptes chrysocome filholi, the eastern rockhopper penguin or Indopacific southern rockhopper penguin – breeds on subantarctic islands of the Indian and western Pacific oceans.

These must, then, be E. c. filholi, at least until the taxonomists get this resolved. And it may not be resolvable because each subspecies is geographically isolated from the others, and so one can’t test whether they can mate in nature and produce fertile offspring—the criterion for “biological species”. Even if they could mate and produce fertile offspring in a zoo, that does not mean they’d do so were they to meet in nature.

These individuals were not close to us, so these shots are the best I could do with my point-and-shoot camera on maximum zoom:

Nice tufts! (Both sexes have them.)

And each sports a crewcut:

Full frontal view of a nesting penguin:

I don’t know whether this one was yawning or calling:

As I walked toward the jetty to take the Zodiac back, I saw a sign verifying what Wikipedia noted: “Legendary West Point hospitality also awaits.” But it was lunchtime, and I didn’t want to spoil my appetite by scarfing down a bunch of pastries and tea, even though the pastries were homemade and provided by the owners for our consumption. This is probably the only time in my life I’ve refused pastries!

And so this is the last post I’ll make on this trip, though I have about 30 videos that I’ll show after I return to Chicago.

For some reason I’m ineffably sad today. (I wrote this before leaving the ship on Thursday afternoon.) Not just because the trip is over, but because I don’t know if I’ll ever return to the Antarctic or South Atlantic. There’s a lot yet to see here! But I’m no longer young, and have other places on my bucket list to see—if I’m lucky to live so long.

Still, this trip has been incomparably wonderful. The only thing I can compare it to, in terms of beauty, is my two youthful treks into the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal to see Mount Everest. (From my childhood that was item #1 on my bucket list!) But this trip also had wildlife, and I’ve seen six species of penguins, as well as many other birds, seals, whales, dolphins, and so on.

And so I think to myself, when I am sad like this, “Well, at least I’ve seen penguins in the wild before I die.” I know that’s a lugubrious sentiment, but it does buck me up.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey, and business will be back to normal in a few days.