An update from the open ocean ...

From the Clipper Adventurer in the Southern Ocean, approaching South Georgia Island, Kenn and Kim write: If you're reading this, then we've succeeded in connecting to the Internet from this ship. The last few days have been packed with birding adventure in Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, and the open ocean. We just spent the last 48 hours completely out of sight of any land, but there hasn't been a moment when no birds were visible -- the southern ocean is alive with seabirds.

We'll write in more detail when we can, but in the meantime, here's a photo of a Wandering Albatross from earlier today. It's a magnificent bird, with a wingspan of a good eleven feet, one of the largest flying birds in the world. So far we've seen four species of albatrosses, four species of penguins, and yes, Kim got her first photos of baby penguins! More later --

Homeward Bound

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kenn and Kim write: Our Antarctic trip finished up with our return to Tierra del Fuego, in southernmost Argentina, on January 25. We'll be home in Ohio in another day or so. But having found a good internet connection here in Buenos Aires, we couldn't resist sending our greetings -- and a few teaser photos to share just a tiny bit of our experience.


This is a distant view of a tiny fraction of the King Penguin colony at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia Island. Look closely! Each little black and brown figure in this photo is a penguin! The brown ones are the big, fat woolly youngsters. They looked so much like bowling pins in fur coats! We saw tens of thousands of penguins on this trip, representing eight species, and we'll describe each species in separate posts after we get home.

Encounters with marine mammals provided some of the non-avian highlights of the trip. Whales, dolphins, and seals are all part of the Antarctic birding experience. Just wait until you see the Orca stuff we have to share!

It's going to take us a while to fully assimilate everything that we saw during the last few weeks, but we'll try to organize it all into posts on the blog so we can share what we experienced and we've learned about Antarctica with you.

Georgia Geography

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: It just occurred to us that we should ward off any potential confusion caused by the popularity of the name "Georgia" in geographic terms. We're in the process of posting, gradually, about our recent Antarctic trip, and one huge highlight of that trip was our four-day visit to South Georgia Island. But we're about to have a four-day visit to an island in south Georgia -- or I should say, in southern coastal Georgia. And these are two different places.

South Georgia Island is beautiful, rugged, and remote, isolated in the far South Atlantic at the edge of the Antarctic region. We didn't see anyone there except a couple of British researchers and the other passengers on our ship. The island that we're visiting next week is also beautiful, but not so rugged or remote. It's Jekyll Island, Georgia, and we're going there for the conference of the Bird Education Network. We'll be seeing lots of people there, lots of our friends and colleagues and co-workers, people who are passionately committed to teaching the public about birds and conservation. Kim and I will be giving a keynote talk together at the conference and helping to lead instructional field trips, and each of us will be taking part in panel discussions. We hope to learn new approaches, share ideas, and come back with even more energy for educational work.

With luck we'll have time to post from there (as well as continuing our Antarctic series). But for a preview of what Jekyll Island is like, visit Lydia Thompson's blog. Lydia is an expert birder and a wonderful artist, and she has done more than anyone to raise awareness of the spectacular bird habitat on Jekyll Island and elsewhere along the Georgia coast.