Tag Archives: Albatross

Oh! To go to Otago!

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Still Saturday 21 March 2026 – Apart from being in the right place to be collected for our afternoon excursion, we had to get back to the hotel so that I could pick up the Nikon and the Big Lens, for the outing was, if not a walk on the wild side, at least a coach ride on it. Accordingly, Danny, one of our guides from Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours, came along to add us to his small busload of people to be taken out to the Otago Peninsula to see what wildlife possibilities it threw up. (Monarch has been quick off the mark – it has the URL wildlife.co.nz, getting which must have required some nifty keyboard warriorship.) A quick look at the terrain of the area will reveal that the peninsula is part of a largish volcanic caldera with other volcanic bits also part of it,

so any journey on the peninsula was going to be up-and-downy and left-and-right-turny. We had two more punters to pick up at Portobello before we could go in search of non-human quarry. Danny explained that the Portobello name came about because of the Edinburgh link with Dunedin; Edinburgh has a Portobello (something I didn’t know – my geographical knowledge is truly being expanded on this trip) and the settlers on the peninsula decided that Dunedin needed one, too.

On the drive there, we saw some lovely scenery.

or, rather, Jane did. I was on the wrong side of the bus. Danny also pointed out various bits of wildlife that we passed, mainly birds. Again, I was on the wrong side of the bus, but managed to snatch a quick snap of a Caspian Tern,

which is apparently not a common visitor to New Zealand.

Having picked up our two final punters, the tour went to Hoopers Inlet, to find New Zealand sealions. There was a sealion creche

where an on-duty mother sealion kept watch whilst pups played.

A little along the beach, other females took it easy

whilst our group and others took advantage of their proximity to get photos. The normal rule is to keep 20 metres away from sealions, but there’s a fence here which allows people to get close.

It’s worth noting that we were cautioned against getting too close to sealions, particularly the blokes. They can (a) get grumpy, (b) take offense and charge and (c) weigh upwards of 300kg. Very different from the advice we got for the fur seals in the Antarctic; they might essay a charge but vigorous arm waving is enough to dissuade them. As I’ve said before, fur seals aren’t true seals – they’re more like small furry sealions. Sealions and fur seals are what are called “eared seals”, and one can just about make out external ears on each. Sealions, though, are larger, and the males are more aggressive; they prefer sandy beaches whereas fur seals tend to colonise rocky outcrops. And they both have different skeletal structures from the “true seals” (e.g. leopard seals, elephant seals), which have shorter legs and arms and thus much more difficulty moving about on land.  True seals swim with their feet; eared seals with their arms.*  It’s easy to see the arms and legs of a sealion when it’s in motion,

like this mother, who we think was coming over from the sunbathers either to tell its progeny off or to take over babysitting duties.

I looked away from the sealions on occasions (the kids’ play is terribly cute but after a while it gets somewhat predictable) and managed to get a photo of an incoming pied stilt.

After a while, we decamped to another beach, Allan’s Beach, just round the corner, where there were a few more sealions, including a large male. Apparently the older they are, the darker they get, a neat trick that humans have to use chemicals to emulate.

There were other sealions on the beach, but very little of what you might call “activity”,

so we eventually moved on to the next phase of the tour which, for us, was a boat trip. The boat in question was the Monarch (which guesswork makes me think might be the inspiration for the company name).

It was skippered by Buddy, who has taken the beardedness that typically marks out New Zealand boat skippers to a new level.

The objective of the cruise was to go out to view the Otago Albatross Colony out at Harrington Point. This is the colony for which (you’ll remember, of course) the return of the first albatross every year gives rise to joyful pealing of the St. Paul’s bells. Buddy piloted the boat and simultaneously gave a running commentary, demonstrating a good knowledge of what the birds were up to. His delivery was somewhat idiosyncratic, but the content was very interesting.

The headland in question

features a lighthouse, unsurprisingly, I suppose, but you’ve seen lighthouses before so I haven’t included a photo of it. Looking closely at the terrain enables you to see where albatrosses have their nests

which are just mud piles built up year on year and returned to each year by the parent albatrosses, which basically mate for life. It wasn’t nesting season, which is why there were no birds there. Where they were was further across and up on the cliff

where young albatrosses were going through the process of pairing up. There would be displays on the ground so that males and females could suss each other out,

and a lot of “Ho, watch me glide!” as a tactic to impress potential mates.

Northern Royal Albatross

The albatrosses that were landing and taking off and gliding about were Northern Royal Albatrosses. Whilst we were there, we also saw some White Capped Albatrosses, but they were merely interlopers and not part of the colony.

White-capped Albatross

White-capped Albatross

There was a certain amount of non-albatross action on the cliff face; some cormorants of a species whose name I can’t remember, but which Buddy said were quite rare,

and a vast mass of gulls clinging to the rock face

(with some shags among them).

On the rocks below were some fur seals (rocks, you see – told you so) and there was a comedy moment as one young pup decided that he would climb up and play with the gulls.

He really went a long way up

until eventually his mum came along to tell him that it was time to come down for his tea, or some such.

After our short (one-hour) cruise, for the final component of the day’s outing, we went to the opera. For the ghastly shrieking singing art form, I would have been reluctant to join in, but this was The Opera, the Otago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance, a private eco-reserve dedicated to conservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and education [their Oxford comma, not mine, I hasten to add], which is an entirely different kettle of fish-eating birds (and other wildlife). Starting in 1985, the property was transformed, by previous land owner Howard McGrouther and conservationist Scott Clarke, from a working farm into a crusading endeavour to save endangered penguins. It’s a good story of a concerted and linked effort to conserve and protect a species of penguin that was in danger of extinction – the yellow-eyed penguin, or hoiho. The reserve allows tourists to view hoiho while out of sight in specially built trenches. There’s also a rehabilitation facility for penguins, a safe place where injured, starving and unwell penguins (principally hoiho, but including other species also) can be treated for their injuries, fed and brought back to health before being released back into the wild. This was our first stop. It was a slightly bizarre experience, because we saw a compound full of basically motionless penguins.

The reason for this is that it was the moulting season for these birds. Unlike many birds which moult small quantities of feather all the time, penguins undergo what is known as a “catastrophic” moult, in other words they exchange their entire set of feathers for a new set all in one go.

Moulting is an energy-consuming (and I think quite uncomfortable) time for penguins, which is why they don’t move around much when it’s happening. Whilst they moult, also, they cannot enter the water since their plumage is temporarily not waterproof, so they can’t swim to feed themselves. Ain’t nature a strange thing? A couple were doing a bit of mutual preening

but otherwise all was still. The main type of penguin was, indeed, the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin;

but there were others, too: the fjordland penguin

and the erect-crested penguin.

(a subtle difference – the erect-crested penguin’s two crests are nearly parallel rather than in a sharpish V shape).

After the enclosure, we moved out into the open-air part of the reserve,

where nesting boxes have been set up for incoming wild penguins.

They were largely empty, but one had at least one inmate and clear evidence of moulting.

We also saw a couple of fur seals

and, round the corner, some more, including another young’un with climbing ambitions. He’s the small brown maggot in the grass at the top of this picture.

By this stage it was beginning to get dark and cold and the hoped-for emergence of penguins onto the beach hadn’t happened, so we called it a day at that point and began the long and winding road back to Dunedin and our hotel.

This was our last stop in New Zealand, bar the necessary stopover in Christchurch in order to catch our flight home. So the only prospect for the morrow was the drive up to Christchurch. As ever, Jane had made sure that we couldn’t just get in the car and drive the whole way, oh dear me no. There were a couple of Things To See en route, and so I’ll regale you with those details in the next entry, which may well be the last for this trip.

 

*  If you want to be nerdish about fur seals versus true seals, then here’s what ChatGPT has to say in the matter:

All seals belong to the pinnipeds (the fin-footed marine mammals), but they split into two main families:

  • Otariidae – the eared seals, which include fur seals and sea lions
  • Phocidae – the true (earless) seals

Falkland Islands 1 – Saunders

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Sunday 10 March 2024 – During yesterday evening’s recap and the briefing for today, Pippa warned us that it might be a bit blowy as we made our way from Stanley, on East Falklands, around the north to Saunders Island, off the coast of West Falkland.

She was right.  It was very blowy.  Hondius did her best, and I suppose it could have been worse; we sailed into the teeth of a westerly of some 50 knots, so the motion was just pitching, rather both pitching and rolling.  But sleep was difficult during the night as we discovered all the bits of the cabin that creaked and rattled as they were shaken up.  However, having arrived at a part of Saunders called The Neck

all appeared to be calm and the sun appeared to be about to rise.  So the landing was On.

The attraction for Saunders was the possibility of seeing a black-browed albatross colony, which would include chicks, something we hadn’t seen before,  When we landed, there were, of course, penguins

and also a reception committee in the form of the owners who turned up in a Land Rover laden with possible goodies for us punters to buy.

We didn’t take up on the offer, but instead set off in search of the albatrosses, past an old try pot, as would have been used by sealers in the Good Old Days

and masses of gentoo penguins, who were moulting, and therefore not all that active.

They were using a considerable breeze to help in the process, and the feathers were everywhere.

Some penguins were building nests, which largely involved stealing building materials from other nest builders

and this was happening all around a variable hawk

which appeared to be eating the remains of a dead penguin.  As with the skua at St. Andrews Bay, the penguins didn’t appear to be too affected by this,

and just carried on moulting around the hawk.

The route we followed to the albatross colony (marked out, as ever, by red poles placed by our guides) led past a uniquely Falkland Islands scene.

Observant readers will note that these penguins are not gentoos, but actually king penguins; there were a few of these around also, some with their fur-coated chicks,

and not, it would seem, in the best of moods at times.  Our track led us past what we assume is an art installation

since it was rather far inland for a whale to have stranded itself on its own – and then have a dolphin land on top of it.  The path led up a hill, past the inevitable uplands geese,

peaty soil

and evidence of a penguin variety we were meeting for the first time – magellanic penguins,

who nest in burrows.  We even found one with a chick in it

and Jane managed to capture a shot that included another inhabitant of that burrow

which we think might have been the mother.  The penguins and their burrows dotted the landscape

to the extent that one had to be a bit careful not to stumble into one as we walked.

Because stumbling became the standard method of progress; as we climbed the hill and rounded the headland

the wind increased enormously, to the point where it was at times difficult to keep one’s balance.  Burrowing suddenly seemed to be quite a good survival strategy.

Shortly after I took the shot above, we passed another penguin colony,

and these were of, again, a variety new to us – rockhoppers.

You can see how impressed they are with the wind. The colony also includes cormorants

which give the rockhoppers added protection, since a skua won’t take on a cormorant.

Finally, in the teeth of a really, really strong wind, we reached the albatross colony, with the chicks clearly visible. Albatross nests are tall mud structures with a concave top, wherein sits first the egg and then the growing chick, which only leaves its “throne” when it is fledged and flies. The nests get taller each year.

This is what the punter had really come to see.

I divided my time between trying not to fall over and watching the behaviour of the parents and chicks.  The chicks were hungry, and pestered the parent for food

which was occasionally dispensed in traditional fashion.

When the parent had dispensed all the food it had brought, it walked away from the chick, faced into wind and

simply flew away.  Yes, I have video….

After a while of watching this we started the journey back to the landing area, which was a little less tiresome as the wind was behind us.  We retraced our steps to find that a few striated caracaras had arrived.

These are birds of a curious disposition, also known as Johnny Rooks, and unafraid of humans – I nearly got a shot of the arse end one which was dive bombing me; and someone else nearly had a hat taken off his head.

We got back to the landing area, where we could see magellanic oystercatchers fossicking about

alongside flightless steamer ducks

kelp gulls and, of course, penguins.

So ended the morning, and we splashed our way back in very gusty winds to Hondius on a Zodiac and headed for lunch.   The afternoon promised a visit to another island and the possibility of tea and cakes, which sounded quite appealing.  Watch this space to see how it turned out.

Three Elephants in One Day

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Thursday 29 February 2024 – After a spell of weather sufficiently wild and woolly that one chap we know actually lost his glasses on the expedition that we decided not to participate in, and which has kept us all on board ever since, the day dawned bright and sunny, and there in front of us (well, actually to port, if you’re being picky) was the first of our three elephants.

Elephant Island is probably most famous as being the place from which Sir Ernest Shackleton launched his renowned and ultimately successful rescue attempt, by striking out in a 22-foot boat with two other men, aiming for South Georgia, where he knew there was a whaling station.  There, he hoped, the whalers would be able to help him stage a mission to rescue the 16 he’d left behind (see later).  He was ultimately successful and is therefore regarded as a hero*; and in his honour, today was being referred to on Hondius as “Shackleton Day”: an opportunity to review his exploits and then to follow in his tracks towards South Georgia.

Our captain took Hondius around Elephant Island to the north side, where we would be able to see Point Wild, the place where Shackleton’s men sheltered whilst he struck out heroically to rescue them.  From that side, the weather was less clement,

but merely overcast and breezy, a nice change from the horizontal rain of the previous days.

Whilst we’d been taking this circumnavigation, we had our second elephantine encounter, something which was actually quite magical, but very difficult to capture photographically; a huge pod of fin whales, feeding.  Fin whales are huge; second only to blue whales in size, and growing up to around 25 metres in length. There were, according to some estimates, as many as 40 of them, swimming around, blowing and feeding on the krill and fish that were disoriented by their antics.  As ever, I have some video, but the various stills Jane and I managed to get between us didn’t do justice to the sight, which was truly majestic.

If you look at the photo below, you can see that there are spouts right across the frame. It’s not a perfect image, but I hope it conveys the scope of what was going on.

Of course, all this disturbance in The (Oceanic) Force brought out all sorts of other creatures to feed on the fallout from the whales’ feeding.  There were porpoising penguins,

shags,

Black-browed albatrosses

and even a stormy petrel on a stick.

OK, it wasn’t on a stick. Or even a petrel.  We think it was actually a light-mantled sooty albatross. But I didn’t want to let the truth get in the way of a cheap laugh.

Eventually, we reached Point Wild, named, not because of any weather conditions, but after Frank Wild, one of Shackleton’s men, who had found it and deemed it a suitable place for the rest of the men to shelter whilst Shackleton was off doing his heroics. In the end they were there for 4 ½ months… It doesn’t look all that inviting, to be honest.

There’s an area between the large rock on the left and the smaller one in the centre which is a sort of cove.  The smaller rock was absolutely covered with penguins (the tiny flecks you can see below).

 

I should pay tribute to the navigation skills of the captain at this point, because, in order to give us passengers something extra to see, he gently let Hondius drift on the wind towards Point Wild, something that must take some nerve, as it’s probably expensive to get it wrong.  Anyway, that’s what he did, and we were able to get an eyeful of this special sight.

You have to look rather carefully to see it, but there it is;

a bust of Luis Pardo, who was the captain of a Chilean ship, Yelcho, which was the vessel which actually performed the rescue of the stranded men.

So, Kudos to the captain for his skill and daring, and it was out with the rum and hot chocolate as we passengers celebrated the memory of the kind of derring-do which marked out the heroic age of Antarctic exploration**.

Shortly after setting off again, we had our third and final elephantine encounter.

Can you see it in the photo above?  A thin grey line stretching from  horizon to horizon?

It’s an iceberg.

One, single, iceberg. A23a. The biggest iceberg currently extant.

It broke away from the ice shelf in 1986, was grounded and therefore stationary for some time, but is now floating freely at a speed of around 3 miles per day.

It’s unimaginably vast.  If you were to pick it up and pop it back down centred on Charing Cross (the middle of London as far as signposts are concerned), then I, for one, would be very cross, because it would crush my house. My house is in Surrey, 25 miles (40 km) to the south west.  So A23a is bigger than Greater London, covers a greater area than the M25.  Of course you can’t capture that in photos.  But here are a few, anyway.

It varies between 20 and 40 metres tall above the sea, which means that there’s some 300 metres of it below the water.

Mesmerising. Mind blowing. A privilege to see it.

What a day we’d had! Such sights and experiences!

There was some light relief available in the evening, as the staff staged a Film Night, with popcorn an’ everyfink.

The film was, of course, “Shackleton”, starring Kenneth Branagh, sporting a particularly heroic hairstyle.

And that was it for the day.  We’re headed along a similar track to Shackleton’s rescue mission, and so will eventually reach South Georgia. We have one stop en route where, conditions permitting, we’ll make landfall for the first time in a couple of days.  I’m hoping for benign weather conditions, and time, as ever, will tell…

 

 

* His rescue mission was, indeed, a heroic exploit and totally admirable.  Both Jane and I, however, regard the whole thing as an exemplar of How To Get On In Corporate Life: cock something up quite badly and then move mountains in a very obvious way to rescue the situation.  Management only remembers the heroics, not the cock-up.  Frankly, in our humble opinions, Shackelton should never have left South Georgia in the first place; the whalers there – and they knew this stuff – told him not to because of the dangers of particularly bad sea ice that year. He went ahead anyway, and that sea ice destroyed his ship, the less-than-ideally named Endurance.

** Less well-known was the other half of the Shackleton expedition.  Shackleton’s original objective was to cross the continent from one ocean to another (the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, actually).  He could take with him sufficient supplies to get him to the Pole, but needed further supplies for the other side of it.  To this end, a party of men set out from New Zealand to the Ross Sea end of Antarctica, to forge south towards the pole from there to drop supply depots for Shackleton’s second half.  This mission, although apparently successful in that it did drop three supply depots totalling a couple of tons of food, was a disaster – poorly-led, badly-planned and resulting in the deaths of three men. And, of course, ultimately pointless because Shackleton barely even got started before losing his ship. Such was the stuff of which men were made in those days.