The Crossings I

Here is what it looks like from the bridge of the Explorer in hurricane force winds. I am surprised that I was able to get these photos since I am generally not moving around too much in heavy seas.











The spray was crashing over the bridge which was about 70 ft above the water surface. The guys below usually don't mind the wind but this was a bit much even for them.



I will post a number of photos this weekend of the various groups of seabirds I encountered during my four crossings of the Drake Passage this year as I slowly make my way through the pile of photos to post.

Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson

Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson
By Elizabeth J. Rosenthal

If one of the criteria for a good biography is that it makes you feel like you personally knew the person profiled, then Birdwatcher most certainly is a good biography. Although I never knew Mr. Peterson and cannot judge to the accuracy of this portrayal of his persona, Rosenthal’s depiction of his life certainly transformed my view of the man from a rather compressed image of a childhood icon, into a colleague (albeit a very respected and revered colleague) I never knew.
Birds and art were two of my strong passions as a child, but unlike my interest in football or hunting, they weren't something that I was able to share with my friends. Although growing up in Eastern Montana has plenty of benefits for a child, finding others with interests in hobbies that aren't mainstream is not one of them. Therefore Rodger Tory Peterson became much more to me than my childhood football heroes, he became an icon of my not so normal passions, someone (along with my Dad) who made it seem less abnormal. But he was still someone I only knew from afar and in abstract. I even wrote a letter to him when I was ten year old. I don’t have a copy of the letter I wrote, but I do have a copy of the letter I received from him. Even though he was away when my letter arrived in Connecticut and the reply is from his secretary, it still has a special place in my personal treasures.



Rosenthal gave me a chance to know a more dimensional Roger Peterson - a man of passion and problems, feelings and faults. She did an excellent job of portraying the events and people in Peterson's life. I particularly like the way the author wove stories told by others about Roger throughout the text. She also profiled a number of people who Roger influenced during his lifetime. I have a feeling that this chapter could have easily been a book in itself. She introduced me to so much that I did not know about Roger Peterson's life and I particularly was impressed with the role that he played in the conservation movement of his time. I also felt the frustration with his desire to be thought of as an artist rather than an illustrator (a distinction I feel is often made without merit).

In particular, I relished the portions of the biography that dealt with Peterson’s infatuation with Antarctica and the iconic Antarctic birds – penguins. He even took King Penguin as his pseudonym - his favorite species in his favorite family of birds. That this fascination was enhanced by his relationship with Lars Eric Lindblad was even more of a treat since I have worked for Lindblad Expeditions, often with naturalists who worked with Roger Peterson during his travels in Antarctica on the original Antarctic tour ship, the Lindblad Explorer. I took this book with me to Antarctica this year to work on this review with the inspiration of being surrounded by a place so special to Mr. Peterson on a Lindblad ship. It was ironic that during our first landing this year we were greeted by an unexpected out of range King Penguin.



Perhaps the best compliment I can give Rosenthal is that this book was so effective in painting the person who was Roger Tory Peterson that shortly after I finished reading it I had a very vivid dream in which I had a conversation with Mr. Peterson. In the dream we were on a rocky beach in Antarctica, Mr. Peterson was sitting on a rock and I was standing to his right. There were Gentoo penguins walking past us on the beach and we had a very pleasant conversation about penguins (the details of which have unfortunately not stuck in my memory). Thank you very much Elizabeth

Cold Morning

This morning I got out a bit in the minus 17 degree cold to see what was around. At least it was sunny this morning and not blowing a blizzard like the last few days. Last night was particularly bad with high winds and lots of loose snow to blow around. It did result is some very interesting snow sculptures this morning as the wind carved the existing drifts into lenticular overhangs and frosty canyons.



I have been wanting a photo of a White-tailed Jackrabbit in it's winter pelage for a while and this morning seemed like a good time to try since these guys are often found tucked into a hole they dig into snowbanks along the road. I found this one fairly soon and he was quite obliging.

Ushuaia - Woodpecker Search

I was also able to spend a bit of time in Ushuaia away from the water. Before we headed south we went to a small park on the west side of the downtown area and found a large group of Black-chinned Siskins and some Rufous-collared Sparrows. The siskins were working over the dandelion seadheads.







I found one good spot with some dead stalks that proved to be a good perch for both species.

When I returned to Ushuaia from my first trip south, I had high hopes of getting out to Tierra Del Fuego National Park to get some walking in and look for the (for me) elusive Magellanic Woodpecker. Elise and I were finally able to get out of town a bit later in the morning than I had hoped via one of the numerous bus transport companies that go back and forth to the park. The place that was recommended to me to go for the best chance of finding woodpeckers was the trail along Lago Roca so that was where we headed. It turned out to be a very nice trail through a wonderful old Nothofagus (Southern Beech) forest.



Scattered throughout the forest were these ascocarp of the fungi Cyttaria darwinii.
I found the following text on this fungus here:

During the last 165 million years, South America was connected to the southern super continent known as Gondwanaland. As Gondwanaland began to break up, South America and Australia were bridged by Antarctica, providing a path for the dispersal of many organisms. Among these organisms were fungi in the genus Cyttaria, the "traveling fungi", and their host, Nothofagus, the Southern Hemisphere Beech. This round tree gall fungus has coevolved with its host into two distinct phylogenetic clades, or groupings, since their biogeographic isolation by the separation of the southern continents. Today, Cyttaria gunnii and Cyttaria septentrionalis are endemic to parts of Australasia, while other species within the same genus, such as Cyttaria darwinii, are only found in South America. Cyttaria has also traveled to England, but only with the help of Charles Darwin during his exploration of South America! --R. Holbert

It was great get out and walk without sinking up to my knees in snow and smell vegetation rather than processed krill. Walking through the forest was also quite a treat for me. I don't get to do that often anymore since the forests of eastern Montana aren't really much to walk through. The beech trees were talking to one another as the wind moved them around. There were many Ent voices as we moved slowly through the moss draped trees. We didn't see a lot of bird species because we were mostly walking through mature forest but what we did find was certainly not anything I get to see everyday and it was great.



White=throated Tree Runners were quite common at the Lago Roca campground along with the Patagonian Sierra Finches.



and Thorn-tailed Rayaditos.



Other bird species we found were Chimango Caracaras, Upland Geese, Austral Thrushes, White-crested Elaenias, and Southern House Wrens.

We found a couple of beautiful orchids as well.

The White Dog Orchid Codonorchis lessonii



And the Yellow Ground Orchid Gavilea lutea





We also found lots of sign for the fabled Magellanic Woodpecker. In the photo above you can see Elise examining a feeding cavity where the bird was extracting grubs from the old beech tree.
And then finally there it was.




Not really. This was as close as I got again. Woodpecker sign and a woodpecker sign.
After walking up the trail and back Elise and I caught our appointed bus back to Ushuaia without seeing a Magellanic Woodpecker. Of course, at one point on the trail we met another couple and they inquired what we were looking for. I told them that we were looking for the Magellanic Woodpecker to which they replied "You should be at the Lago Verde campground where we are staying - they wake us up each morning with their knocking on the trees."
And when I got back I found this trip report from Pete Morris at BirdQuest from earlier in November where they saw woodpeckers near Ushuaia before and after their Antarctic trip.

One of these days I will hopefully have the time to spend a couple of days in this wonderful area, not only to look for the woodpecker but also just to get out and see some of the gorgeous landscape and the creatures that inhabit this amazing portion of the world. One of my freinds from Glasgow, Woody Baxter, and a couple of his friends from Western Montana were in Patagonia this December as well. They were planning on driving and hiking throughout the area and I am curious to see how their trip turned out.



This is the last photo I had on my camera from Ushuaia before I headed back to winter. When I got home and drove to work the next day the thermometer told me it was twenty below zero. Oh to be back in balmy Antarctica!

Ushuaia Shoreline

Female Flying Steamer-Duck

Rather than do a day by day recap of the last few weeks with photos, I am going to try to put them into groups and have photos from both trips combined. I am going to start with Ushuaia.



I wasn't able to get out of town much during this trip because of work and ship schedules but I was able to spend a fair amount of time along the shoreline in Ushuaia at the begining of my trips and in between voyages. Early mornings were nice and quiet and I could get away from the hum of the ships engines and the bustle of the busy pier for a while.


Female Kelp Goose


Male Kelp Goose


Dolphin Gull - this has got to be one of the most colorful gulls around and quite a striking bird.


Crested Ducks


Chiloe Wigeon


Dark-bellied Cincloides


Black-crowned Night Heron



Early in December there were two very large tour ships at the pier. In the photo above you can see the the forward end of the National Geographic Explorer in front of a very large ship. In the foreground is a group of kayakers. There were so many people in town that day from these two ships that there was a large cloud of dust west of town from where all the buses were coming and going to Tierra Del Fuego National Park.





South American Tern


Male Flying Steamer-Duck

Home Again

Home again after nearly 28 hours of airports and airplanes. Lots of photos to share soon. Here is one to start.

Penguin Royalty

When I arrived on the bridge of the ship early Thursday morning, December 18th, we were just arriving at Paulet Island. Paulet is a volcanic island located in the northwestern part of the Weddell Sea near the Antarctic Peninsula. It is not very large, but it is home to over 60,000 pairs of nesting Adelie Penguins. Even from well offshore you can see the colonies, light pink amoeba-like stains on the rocky slopes and beaches of the southeast side of the island. The usual landing spot was choked full of ice so we opted to land at a point further down the beach. The major concern when we arrived on shore was exactly where to land everyone. From the shoreline on the falling tide it was difficult to see the top of the cobble beach to determine if this was the only spot on that part of the beach where there was a gap in breeding penguins wide enough to allow guests access to the interior. It was.
Aileen and I were off soon after getting to the beach towards the usual landing site because that was where our work needed to get done. We threaded our way between the colonies to the spot where we needed to count the Blue-eyed Shag colony. The shag colony on Paulet is also one of the largest in the area and it rises above the beach on a steep scree slope above the beach. After completing that count we took some photos of the colony to double check our counting later on. We then headed towards an Adelie colony near the remains of a historical stone hut where Captain Larsen and 22 men over-wintered during the 1903 winter after loosing their ship to ice in Antarctic Sound. They subsisted almost entirely on penguins and it is a bit ironic that we are there to count the number of nesting Adelies at a relatively small Adelie colony near the remains of the hut. After completing that work we made our way between more nesting penguins on the slopes of a plateau rising above to a point overlooking many of the colonies where we took some reference photos. We then headed to the other end of the plateau, again weaving between the penguin colonies, overlooking the large flat beach area near the landing site where we took more reference photos of the colonies from high above. Our time on the island was up and we headed back to the landing beach and joined that last of the staff on the island in the last zodiac back to the ship.
Once we were all onboard the ship headed east even further into the Weddell Sea with plans to reach Snow Hill Island, a bit to the southeast of our position at Paulet. This portion of the Weddell Sea is littered with icebergs – more so than anywhere else on the peninsula. It also has very large tabular icebergs, remains of ancient ice shelves that cover portions of the ocean surrounding Antarctica. These flat-topped, steep sided, huge bergs are often well over 100 feet tall above the water with probably close to 900 feet ice hiding below the water. Some we observed may have been remains of the Larsen Ice Shelf which used to cover significant portions of the sea along the southeastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula but which has since mostly disintegrated or they may have drifted from the Ross Ice shelf on the other side of the continent. As we made our way through the ice I headed to the top of the bridge to try to get some more Snow Petrel photos. I was also looking hard to find an Emperor Penguin on the ice too. There is a small Emperor colony near Snow Hill Island and although they were done breeding by this time, there is always a chance to find one out on the ice in this area. I lasted for a while in the cold wind and then dropped down into the bridge. Almost as soon as I arrived I noticed a dark spot on a flat piece of ice off in the distance. I pointed it out to Richard White, perhaps the person with the most experience in the world with birds in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Drake Passage, having worked on Lindblad ship in Antarctica for the last 7 years, and he had just noticed it too. We watched for a bit and were pretty sure it was an Emperor. The Captain started moving the ship towards the bird and I headed out to the bow. We originally thought that is was a young bird, but as we got closer we realized it was an adult. It was preening at the ice edge and we moved slowly closer. Soon we were right at the edge of the ice and the bird was just off the bow of the ship. It was the best looks I have had of an Emperor and it was a great treat for the afternoon. However, soon after pulling away from the bird, the wind picked up considerably and the ice started to move. We had to scrap the plans for Snow Hill Island and make our way back towards the peninsula before the ice closed in on the ship. We spent the rest of the evening dodging ice and heading back through Antarctic Sound to the west side of the peninsula to get out of the wind.