Storm Petrel: For Jack, perhaps the most moving event was the discovery of a storm peterl's nest high on a rocky ridge. These birds are the legendary Mother Carey's Chickens who are at home in very big seas, scampering around the gignatic waves as we would around our garden.

 

 
While they are indelibly associated with the great Southern Oceans, storm petrels have to go ashore sometime to breed, so it was wonderful for Jack to witness that, even if he had to be a bit sharp with a crewmate who was spooking the petrel from returning to the nest by standing like a bright yellow beacon on the crest of the ridge!

 

 

 

Cape Petrel: Sailors called them Cape Pigeons and were enormously cheered by their presence in bad weather conditions, just as we were! On a number of occasions in Drake Passage, after days of 6-hourly 2 hour watches in intimidating large waves, bitter cold and ever-threatening nausea, Tara and I were really cheered up when a Cape Petrel landed on the boiling sea in the lee of the boat and proceeded to settle down with a wiggle and a fluffing of feathers.............. as if it were in the bathroom of a luxury hotel instead of a freezing maelstrom! (no pictures of that, unfortunately.....there was not much motivation to have he camera on deck in those conditions).

 

 


 

 
 
 
 
 


 
       Cape Petrel nest on Deception Island

 

 
 
 
 
 

Antarctica Skua:
Skuas had the most beautiful smoothly-crafted nest of moss that looked a live as the moss on the surrounding rocks. The egg was spotted dark green and so perfectly camouflaged that I discovered the nest only by accident as a result of the excessive attention being paid to me by the pair. The reason that I don't have a picture of the beautiful nest is that I discovered the nest on the last night at this island in the Joubin group when it was too dark for photography and I did not have my camera with me anyway.

 

 
 
 
 
 

Giant Petrel: (or "Stinker" .....  so called because it can "projectile-vomit" a smelly oil at those who offend it. This did not happen to any members of the Fernande crew). There was a colony on one of the Joubin Islands not far from teh Palmer US base on Anvers Island where these photos were taken, but we saw them throughout the trip.

 

 

 
 
 
 
 


 

 

 
 
 
 
 

This is the white phase of the giant petrel, which Jack got excited about and jumped up and down telling everyone that he had found a nesting albatross!  These big tube-noses are closely related to albatrosses, which were quite rare on the trip, except for the ubiquitous mollymawk (black-browed albatross), which was prolific in Beagle Channel. We saw a few wnadering albatrosses in Drake's Passage, but I would say that albatrosses were very rare on this trip, perhapsreflecting their continued "by catch" slaughter at the hands of long line fishermen.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mollymawk or Black-Browed Albatross:

 

 
 
 
 
 


 

 
 
 

Arctic Tern.

Here is the rocky outcrop one of the Joubin islands where we found an Arctic tern nesting. In Beagle Channel we saw an island, Snipe I. where Antarctic Terns were breeding on the hillside in such huge numbers that it looked like a swarm of butterflies from a distance. No such dense aggregations here in Antarctica.





Tara discovered their well-camouflaged nest in a patch of rock surrounded by snow. See if you can find the egg!
 

                





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Blue-eyed Cormorants:
This well-insulated nest was at Port Lockroy.

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

Flock of gentoos using man-made channel in the pack near Booth Island: (See separate page for more penguins)

 

 
 
 


 

 

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