A closer look at those two bison in the video

More bighorns, plus a baby

Unfortunately, the picture of the lamb is blurry, but the cuteness comes through.

A newborn

I'm no seal expert, but this baby, the tiniest one I saw, can't have been more than a couple of days old.

Kids and teenagers

When playing turns to squabbling.

A rarity

This adorable baby in Fortuna Bay isn't an albino; the white morph in Antarctic fur seals is seen in only 1 or 2 per thousand.

Family time

These seals were in Ocean Harbor. I like how in the family on the right, dad is watching the kids while mom crashes.

I don't know if the adult in the picture on the left is the mother or just an adult guarding a nursery, but I love how the young seal on the right has already got the “look straight up with your eyes closed” fur seal posture down.

Update: Looking at these pictures drives me a little crazy because of the bad cropping. But I have to remind myself that they were taken from a zodiac, where not only were we rocking and bouncing, but I was also shooting around and over fellow passengers. (If it was calm enough and we were stationary sometimes we were allowed to stand in the zodiacs. But I took a lot of these pictures while we were moving.) So I make the best pictures I can out of what I got.

I think we all need some baby seals

Fortunately, South Georgia was full of them. Here's a nursery in Fortuna Bay.

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.

And a baby!

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

It's been a hard day's night

Two baby seals just chilling outside one of the buildings.

Sunday bird blogging

I left Santiago early this morning, and flew to Punta Arenas, and then to the improbably named Puerto Williams, a city on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego.

Now I'm on a ship heading to South Georgia, and then the Antarctic Peninsula. A few weeks ago when I was so sick I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do this but here I am, with the familiar soothing sound of the waves outside and that rumbly, rocking motion under my feet.

We were only in Puerto Williams long enough to board the ship and have our safety briefing before sailing, but I already saw three new birds.

This is one of them—the Magellanic cormorant, also known as the rock shag. They were nesting on some old posts in the water near where the ship was anchored. I have a better picture of the adults, but I love that in this one, one of the fledglings (those grayish lumps that look like large dust bunnies are actually baby birds) has a foot poking out of the nest.

Mother and child 2

I think these are the same two alpacas, just snuggling.

Mother and child

I took the picture of the baby alpaca nursing, and as soon as the shutter clicked the alpacas stopped and looked at me like, “Do you mind?”

Sunday alpaca blogging

I may have mentioned that I have been sluggish and slothful, to put it kindly, since I came back from Peru. I had a lot of things I wanted to get done this summer, and accomplished very few of them. (It didn't help that the weather was unbearably hot and sticky and that every time I left the apartment I returned with my clothes sodden and my hair dripping.)

Then I happened to see this article about therapy alpacas. The alpaca farm in the article is up near Boston, and had only one free slot for visitors left this month, but it occurred to me that there might be an alpaca farm closer to home, and that really, aren't all alpacas by definition therapy alpacas?

So on Thursday I visited the Shalimar Alpacas Farm in Warwick, New York. It was possibly the only incentive that could have gotten me off my ass and out of the city, and the alpacas did not disappoint.

And there was a baby llama!

This baby was trying to nurse but every time it latched on, Mom would move on to a more promising patch of grass and baby was left running after her to try again.

Sunday bird blogging

I suspect even Canadians don't love their namesake geese; they're obnoxious, invasive pests.

But -- babies! I took this picture of goslings in the Greenway by the Hudson right after I came back from Savannah. I saw them -- or a similar flock -- yesterday in the same park and they're neck-high to their parents now, though still covered in down. They grow up so fast!

Sunday bird blogging

This is a  crop from a bigger picture I'll post later, but I have to highlight these adorable baby egrets from Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge yesterday.

Plus a baby

In addition to all its other attractions at the cultural village, there were cute babies.

Oh baby baby

Here's a cropped image so you can see a little more of that sweet face.

Oh baby

Yes, that's a baby gorilla, only a couple of weeks old, with mom.

They were back in the trees and so not easily photographed, but it was astonishing to me that we were able to get as close as we were. The trust that the gorillas showed us was humbling. It made me want to be worthy of it, to do everything I can to see that they are protected.