Penguin life

To finish up this round of looking at the king penguin colony at St. Andrew's, here are some video clips.

Hey, what's the matter with your head?

Even the most slender penguins appear kind of stocky when they're standing still or waddling along, but in fact they have very long, flexible necks. Which is why in any picture of a group of penguins you'll probably have at least one that appears to have no head, like the one on the bottom right.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!

More penguins in the mist

There was a river emptying into the bay, and the banks were lined with penguins as far as I could see. They reminded me of pilgrims gathering at the Ganges.

Penguins in the mist

This was taken on the beach right after going ashore at St. Andrew's Bay.

You have to zoom in on this one, to see how the penguins just seem to go on forever, fading into the mist.

When the grownups are all asleep

A juvenile penguin in St. Andrew's Bay is the only one still standing.

The penguin just in front of the youngster looks like another juvenile that is almost finished molting into its adult feathers.

I will never not find this hilarious

A king penguin at ease in St. Andrew's Bay.

Penguins are awkward, if adorable, on land, waddling and jumping, compared to their speed and grace in the water. But they never appear more ridiculous to my human eyes than when they belly flop on the beach to take a breather.

For example

In this picture you can see the feathers all over the rocks—and on the poor seal who made the mistake of hanging out with penguins.

Bonus bird blogging

A molting king penguin in St. Andrew's Bay.

Unsurprisingly, with 150,000 penguins in residence, everything in St. Andrew's is covered with feathers.

Sunday bird blogging

As a break from penguins, here's a giant petrel in Fortuna Bay in South Georgia. The closeup lets you get a good look at that very complicated, so-ugly-it's-almost beautiful, beak.

Two more shorelines

The picture on the left was also taken with my phone, but did not come out quite so cartoony.

Why was I using a phone at all? Simple logistics. I brought it ashore to take videos, which was much easier than using the big Canon. But because of the restrictions in place now—no kneeling, crouching, or resting bags or any equipment on the ground—I would put my camera away in my backpack before heading back to the zodiacs. (There were big bins on a tarp where we could leave our life jackets when we came ashore, and grab another when leaving, and it was more convenient to wrestle with getting my camera into my backpack and closing it up again if I could rest it on the side of the bin.) So if I saw something I wanted to take a picture of while waiting for the next zodiac, I had to use my phone.

Saturday reflections

Glacier reflections on the beach at Neko Harbor.

I took this picture with my phone and the lack of fine detail makes it look like a painting.

How the penguins get clean

Gentoos swimming in Neko Harbor.

Gentoos are the fastest swimmers among penguins—they can go 22 miles per hour in the water (part of the reason I still have never managed to get good pictures of them porpoising—by the time you click the shutter, they're gone, and they swim so fast you can't predict where they'll surface again.)

More gentoos, more snow

The first time I went to Antarctica, I shared pictures with my co-workers when I came back. My new manager, who was kind of an idiot, expressed her disappointment in the penguins because they were so “dirty.” It is true that real-life penguins are often kind of grubby, covered in mud and poop and other substances you would probably prefer not to have identified. You know, what with them being wild animals and all.

So I'm posting these two completely redundant penguin pictures from Neko Harbor because the penguins are so clean they would probably pass even this manager's unrealistic standards. (Well, except for their feet.) Also I like the tiny white spots all over the head of the gentoo on the right. Very stylish!

Penguin highways

I have a photo of the penguin highways going up the mountain, but this short video gives more context and shows more of the site.

The penguin colony and the glacier

Wide-angle versions of this shot, to show the amazing surroundings.

Ice cave

On the other hand, this was new: a cave in the glacier along the harbor visible only from the edge of the beach.

Gentoo walking in snow

After two trips to Antarctica, I probably have a couple dozen similar photographs. So did I really need another one?

Yes, I think I did.

Those sneaky penguins

The regulations also require keeping at least 5 meters distance from any wildlife, but that rule is a lot harder to follow. You might be waiting patiently for a couple of penguins to cross the path ahead of you, and not realize that there's another one coming up behind you.

View from the ship

This is the landing area at Neko Harbor, taken from the ship. One of the zodiacs is heading back to the beach, and if you zoom in, you can see the line of red jackets heading up the mountain to a viewing spot.

The Antarctic tourist regulations allow a maximum of 100 people ashore at one time; since there were 200 passengers on the ship, we were divided into six groups for zodiac boarding, and three groups at a time would be on shore. After an hour or ninety minutes, the first three groups would return to the ship and the other three groups would go ashore. (Which groups went first rotated every day.)

Since my group was going ashore later, I got to watch the first group from the ship.

I did not climb up that mountain by the way--much too steep and slippery. It would have taken all of the limited time on shore just to get my ass safely up to the top lookout and back down again, and I preferred staying closer to the beach where I could enjoy the glacier views and watch the penguins.

Gentoo love

I really did keep saying to myself, “You know, you don't have to take a picture of every penguin you see.” (Or mountain. Or iceberg. Or whale.) But did I listen?

These two were worth capturing, though. The penguin on the left had offered the penguin on the right a pebble. This is like a diamond ring in Penguinland, and all of us watching (from the mandated distance, of course) were crushed on the penguin's behalf when the pebble was refused. The rejected suitor dropped the pebble and waddled away, and the other penguin promptly dug around in the snow and retrieved it. Hey, you don't want to let a perfectly good pebble go to waste!

Neko Harbor

Yes, I probably should finish going through and posting pictures from South Georgia before jumping to Antarctica, but honestly with hundreds of pictures still to go through and school starting again next week, I'm finding it hard to be methodical. (And not sure that there's any real need to post pictures in the order I took them, anyway.) So I saw a picture I really liked from Neko Harbor and next thing I knew I was looking for more of them.

So here's a colony of gentoos, with a nice glacier as a backdrop.

A change in the weather is known to be extreme

(When I typed this Dylan quote as the title of the post, it occurred to me that I might have already used it. So I checked—I've already used it for three different posts, including one about Antarctica in 2018. But there are more than 5000 posts on this blog, so I think I'm allowed to repeat myself.)

It had been sunny and (reasonably) warm in Fortuna Bay in the morning, but by the time we got into the zodiacs in Prince Olav Harbour after lunch it was chilly and overcast. After about an hour, the mists rolled in over the mountains, looking like a backdrop in a movie where something very bad is about to happen and the wind started to pick up. And by the time we got back to the ship there was a thick fog and heavy swells and the zodiacs were bouncing around like giant rubber ping pong balls.

Natural and unnatural

Tussac grass and some yellow lichen in Prince Olav Harbour. South Georgia has 200 species of lichens, several types of grasses, and birds, but no mammals other than seals. After a long campaign, rodents brought by sailors were finally eradicated in 2018 after more than 200 years (one of the reasons for the stringent inspections before we could land there.) There also used to be herds of reindeer, which were introduced by Norwegian whalers, but they were so destructive to the native grasses and plants that they also had to be killed.

There are still some foreign plants that were brought by settlers, but most of what you'll see on the island is native—plus, of course, the detritus left by humans, like those giant rusty “flowers” in the picture on the right.

More ruins

Some of the ruined buildings on the bluffs overlooking the bay.

Prince Olav Harbour

A view from farther out in the bay, showing the wreckage strewn along the beach and the gloomy mountains overhead.

Even weirder, still beautiful

There are abandoned whaling stations all over South Georgia, but the most extensive ruins we saw were in Prince Olav Harbour. I liked the juxtaposition of the wrecked, rusting, tanks and buildings and machinery, and the crowds of seals that have now claimed the beaches as their own.

More seals on the beach

Seals in Elsehul Bay.

I kept singing the Taylor Swift song Snow on the Beach when I was in South Georgia, but substituting “seals” for “snow.”

“Weird but fucking beautiful” definitely still applies.

Miami Beach buildings

Some of the buildings I saw walking around near the hotel and the botanical gardens.

Miami is famous for its art deco architecture, but I didn't make it to the section of South Beach with most of the best-known buildings. Most of what I saw were buildings like the one on the top left—bungalows surrounded by palm trees. But you can see the art deco influence in the geometric shapes and colors in many of the other buildings.

Sunday bird blogging

I'm sure everyone expected a penguin, but I actually did see a new bird in Miami Beach.

It's not a terrific picture, but I loved the way these white ibises were moving in lockstep across the conveniently churned-up soil in a vacant lot.

Saturday reflections

These koi were the best thing in the Botanical Gardens. I love this picture.

Botanical Gardens

I was happy to wake up Wednesday to blue skies and warm temperatures—if you have to spend time in Florida, at least the weather should be nice—and I decided to go to the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, which was about a thirty minute walk from the hotel.

The gardens were surprisingly small, and full of jungly greenery and few flowers—I had to keep reminding myself that I was back in the Northern Hemisphere, and Florida or not, it was still winter. But there were butterflies, and yellow warblers high up in the trees, and I savored having bare arms one more time before heading home to winter weather.

Urban poetry

An alley in South Beach. It was such a dark, dismal day that the original shot was practically black and white without any tweaking on my part.

I am home, and it is so cold here I am missing Antarctica. Or at least all of the layers I was wearing there, which is incentive to start tackling the suitcase full of dirty laundry, because those wool long johns are looking good right now.

Whiplash

Monday morning I woke up to snow-capped mountains in the Beagle Channel.

24 hours and three flights later, I was dragging luggage through the deserted Miami airport. My flight landed at 4:30 am, which ought to be illegal, and it was dark and drizzly all day, which added to my sense of disorientation. Where am I again? Oh, right, for some reason, I'm in Miami.

I went for a walk and found a cafe with excellent huevos rancheros, but after that I just watched TV in my room and counted down the hours until I could decently go to bed.

Just before sunset, the skies cleared and I got my first look at the Miami skyline across Biscayne Bay. That's better, I thought, and was asleep within minutes.

Are you kidding me?

This seal in Prince Olav Harbour in South Georgia perfectly expresses my mood at the moment. And it reminds me to focus on the wonderful journey I've had, instead of dwelling on the annoyances of the moment.

This particular moment involves waiting for an overnight flight to Miami in a crowded lounge at Santiago Airport, where there is little to eat and an entire refrigerator full of sodas but no water. There is a water dispenser, and when I asked—in Spanish!—where the glasses for the water were, I was told that there were no glasses and I should use a coffee cup. So I am sitting at a rickety table, with no access to a port to charge my phone, drinking water from a coffee cup, in what is allegedly a VIP lounge.

But look at how cute that seal is!

Iceberg, rock, glacier

All the components of the Antarctic landscape in one image, taken from the beach in Mikkelsen Harbor.

Glacier in Cierva Cove

I like this one because it is a little different: a scattering of chinstraps making a new pattern across the surface of the glacier.

Sunday bird blogging

Gentoos in Mikkelsen Harbor.

I couldn't get close enough to get a clear picture but if you zoom in you can see that the penguin on the bottom left has two chicks, so tiny that you could easily overlook them. The last time I was here I saw gentoo chicks, but they were much bigger—maybe the difference between visiting at the end of January instead of the beginning.

Gentoo swim club

As you can probably tell, I am just posting the pictures and videos I've happened to go through already, with no particular theme or order. I have maybe a thousand pictures I haven't gone through, so obviously will not be organizing them any time soon.

The penguin leaping out of the water at the end of this video—and sticking the landing because, penguins—is one of my favorite moments from this trip.

And a baby!

This elephant seal pup was probably less than a week old (and already weighed more than I do.) But so cute!