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.

Happy Thanksgiving! (I think I got it right this time as I see it’s Thursday). This will be the penultimate trip report, as there’s one more either tomorrow or Saturday, and then I will post the videos I took when I return to Chicago (penguins!)

As I write this at 5:30 a.m., we’re pulling into Punta Arenas, the end of the line for this trip and for my trip. Here’s our position on the ship’s real-time map:

And because the ship’s Panomax camera is giving a view from over an hour ago, here’s one I took through my cabin window with the photobooth feature on my laptop:

We’re back in civilization, with people and buildings, though I hear there are penguins in the area. But I won’t see them. I’ll be spending today—Thanksgiving—in a hotel in the city, leaving from the local airport tomorrow afternoon for Santiago, and then Miami and then Chicago.

Here’s just after sunset Tuesday night: a view from my cabin at about 10 p.m.. It was rainy out, but the colors were amazing.

Monday saw a drizzly and overcast landing on Carcass Island, and a pleasant three-hour walk from the landing site to a rookery where there were gentoo and Magellanic penguins: my first sight of the latter species in the wild. The red marker shows the location of the tiny (19km² or 7.3 mi²) island.

From Wikipedia:

The island’s grim-sounding name comes from the ship HMS Carcass, which surveyed the island in 1766. Its accompanying vessel, HMS Jason, gave its name to the nearby Jason Islands, and its captain, John McBride, gave his name to MacBride Head.

It has been run as a sheep farm for over a century and is owned by R. P. McGill The island’s three heritage-listed buildings are a boathouse, shed, and store. Its small settlement lying on Port Patterson on the southwest coast is also known for its gardens and has a small grocery shop.

Here’s an aerial view, with a closer map below that:

We landed in Zodacs at “ramp” by the settlement and then walked southeast until we got to Leopard Beach, the site of the rookery.

Do remember, when you look at these photos—and other photos from the trip—that I’ve reduced their size from 3-5 mB to about 150 kB or smaller. This is why they’re not of the usual quality here.

The island reminds one of England, and has been planted with gorse.

More from Wikipedia:

Though the island has been a sheep farm for more than a century, careful management has preserved its varied habitat and mature tussac grows in replanted coastal paddocks.  The island contains one of the few substantial stands of trees in the Falklands. There is however, a true wood at Hill Cove. None of the species are endemic, but they include such exoticisms as Monterey cypress trees, and New Zealand cabbage palms. The night herons nest within these trees. The gardens also include other introduced plants such as fuchsias, lupins, and dog roses.

Here’s the ship in the foggy distance, with gorse in the foreground:

Even more from Wikipedia:

The island has no rats or cats, and as a result has a wide variety of birdlife including black-crowned night herons, known in the Falkland Islands as “quarks”, as well as seals and penguins. The several substantial freshwater ponds are important waterfowl sites.

The West Point Island group, which includes Carcass Island, has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA). Birds for which the site is of conservation significance include Falkland steamer ducks, ruddy-headed geese, gentoo penguins, southern rockhopper penguins, Magellanic penguins, black-browed albatrosses, striated caracaras, blackish cinclodes, Cobb’s wrens and white-bridled finches.

I saw several of these. This one, according to Jacques Hausser in the comments, is a male kelp goose, Chloephaga hybrida.

Reader John, an ornithologist, notes that the bird’s name is a misnomer:

Upland geese are not actually geese; they’re sheldgeese, which are related to shelducks. They’re ducks, in other words. There are no true geese in South America, though there’s one species of true swan. (There’s also the coscoroba swan, which isn’t a swan.)

Here’s a female upland goose along the trail with three goslings:

Our expedition bird expert, Becky, identified this one as a Blackish Cinclodes (Cinclodes antarcticus). Wikipedia notes that it “is a passerine bird of the genus Cinclodes belonging to the ovenbird family Furnariidae. It is native to the southern tip of South America including the Falkland Islands where it is known as the tussac-bird or tussock-bird. It is often very tame and will approach humans closely.” Indeed it did. Many of the birds on Carcass were quite tame, perhaps due to the paucity of predators.

The adorable mom and chick below walked right beside me on the trail; they are, I was told, Fuegian Snipes (Gallinago stricklandii), again from southern South America. I’m about dubious about the ID, as this species appears to be rare in the Falklands. According to Wikipedia,

It is sporadically recorded in the Falkland Islands, where it has reputedly bred. However, there is only one recent record and the historical documentation of breeding is a lost specimen of questionable identity. The occurrences in these islands could therefore be due to either a tiny breeding population or vagrancy from the mainland.

Well, this one clearly bred, as shown by the heavily camouflaged chick, but it could be its similar-looking relative, the Magellan snipe (Gallinago paraguaiae). The reason I think it’s a Fuegian Snipe is because it lacks the dark eye bar of the Magellan snipe. But only a crack birder will know for sure. If you do, weigh in below. Maybe I made a valuable spot!

A striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis), a predator who preys on, among other things, gentoo penguins. It’s primarily a scavenger, though. Like the one we saw the next day on West Point Island, it was fearless, sitting only about ten feet off the trail as we passed by. Wikipedia notes that behavior:

The population in the Falklands is estimated at 500 breeding pairs. Juveniles and indeed, adults, are almost entirely fearless of humans and treat their approach with indifference. Over time, conflict with the sheep farmers has led to a great reduction in their numbers. This is now being corrected by the Falkland Islanders.

Further down the trail, I saw this, which means only one thing: penguins nested here, and almost certainly gentoo penguins, which leave poop marks like this (see yesterday’s post). I waited a bit because I thought there might be penguins about, and sure enough, a trio of gentoos came waddling up from the sea (second photo):

Finally, as we neared Leopard Beach, I finally saw my first Magellanic penguin (Speniscus magellanicus), notable for its white eyebrows, pink skin around the eyes, and scarflike neck stripe. It’s easily distinguished from the gentoo by that stripe.

It’s a medium-sized penguin that digs burrows to nest in. It’svnamed after Ferdinand Magellan, who first described these birds.

A nest hole with two penguins and a nearby skua. Adult birds are 61–76 cm (24–30 in) tall and weigh between 2.7 and 6.5 kg (6.0 and 14.3 lb).

Here’s the rookery on Leopard Beach. Most of the penguins are gentoos, but if you look closely you can see some with the distinctive white neck ring. Can you spot the Magellanic penguin in this photo?

Two Magellanic penguins side by side. They seem to be shy and we were not allowed to get too close to them.

How many Magellanics here?

And here?

A penguin interlude: here are two models of penguin skulls. Can you guess which species they represent? (Answer at bottom.)

Skull A:

Skull B:

On the way to and from the island in the Zodiacs, we encountered a pod of dolphins who seemed to be fascinated by the fast-moving rubber boats. Every time a Zodiac would take off or come in, dolphins would appear out of nowhere and race the boat. It was no contest: they were much faster than these fast-moving boats. Here are two porpoising by a Zodiac.

After returning to the ship, I spent a pleasant half hour watching the Zodiacs go in and out and trying to get pictures of these animals. It’s hard to predict where and when they’ll surface, but I got a few shots, certainly enough to identify them, from their size and distinctive black-and-white striping, Commerson’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii). These are little guys that are grouped into two subspecies, as Wikipedia notes:

Commerson’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii), also referred to by the common names jacobita, skunk dolphin, piebald dolphin or panda dolphin, is a small oceanic dolphin of the genus Cephalorhynchus. Commerson’s dolphin has two geographically-isolated but locally-common subspecies. The principal subspecies, C. c. commersonii, has sharply-delineated black-and-white patterning and is found around the tip of South America. The secondary subspecies, C. c. kerguelenensis, is larger than C. c. commersonii, has a less-sharply delineated dark and light grey patterning with a white ventral band, and is found around the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

The dolphin is named after French naturalist Dr Philibert Commerson, who first described them in 1767 after sighting them in the Strait of Magellan.

This is clearly the commersonii subspecies:

My observations comported with what Wikipedia adds:

Commerson’s dolphin is very active. It is often seen swimming rapidly on the surface and leaping from the water. It also spins and twists as it swims and may surf on breaking waves when very close to the shore. It will bow-ride and swim behind fast-moving boats. It is also known to swim upside-down, which is thought to improve the visibility of its prey.

I’m not sure what that last sentence means unless they’re trying to say that when the dolphin swims upside down, it can see its prey better.

I can count at least seven dolphins in this photo; they’re easy to spot near the surface because of their white markings. When we approached the ship, the dolphins played around our Zodiac, too. It was really lovely.

How many dolphins?

And six more. Or is it seven?

Two pictures (not mine—from Wikipedia) of Commerson’s dolphins. No wonder they’re called “skunk dolphins”!

This one shows the size of this tiny dolphin compared to an “average human”:

And that was it for Monday. We have one more post to go on the trip: a visit to the the rockhoppers and albatrosses of West Point Island in the Falklands.

I wonder if I’ll ever return to Antarctica. I surely want to, and I hope my performance on this trip warrants a repeat invitation. One thing is for sure: I was absolutely right to put Antarctica on my bucket list.

____________

Answers to skull quiz:

A: Gentoo penguin
B: King penguin.

I saw both of these species, as well as the rockhopper (tomorrow), Magellanic, Adelie, and Chinstraps. Six species!