My eyes have seen the glory....

Kim writes: Some of you may be wondering why--outside of a few random photos and thoughts--I haven't really attempted to describe the Antarctic experience. In fact, I've been wondering about it myself. Certainly time is a factor. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. In the Kaufman Universe, life moves at warp speed. But, time (or lack thereof) is not the real problem. It's the trip itself.

Unlike Kenn, I was not born with the "travelin' bone." I grew up on a farm in rural Ohio and throughout most of my childhood no one I knew ever went anywhere, to speak of. If someone actually went someplace that required a SUITCASE it was a really big deal! Funny story---When I graduated from High School one of my Aunts got me a set of luggage. Of course I accepted the gift graciously, but inside I was thinking, "You gotta be freakin kidding me with the luggage, right?" (Sorry Aunt Connie! You're the best.)

Now, you might think that marrying someone like Kenn, I must have had some idea that travel would be part of my life. But to be honest, it wasn't something I really even thought about. I mean, yeah, I knew that Kenn had worked for many years as a bird tour leader--traveling all over the world. But, by the time we met, he had moved on from tour leading to work on his field guide series. I guess on some level I assumed that far-flung travel was a thing of the past. Kenn is an amazing person and he fills my life with so much adventure that I would be perfectly content if we never left home. But, traveling with him is like the ultimate bonus. And now--that girl who laughed at the idea of owning a suitcase--has been to some pretty astounding places.

Antarctica....

Now, be honest...If you were asked to make a list of the top 10 places in the world that you wanted to travel to, would your list include Antarctica? For me, the thought of going someplace like that was just too far outside the scope of my imagination. For good reason. It was a totally mind-blowing, life-altering experience. Nothing could have prepared me for it. No books. No pictures. No videos on U-Tube. Nothing does it justice.

But now I have been there. And I have struggled for weeks to find a way to tell you what it was like. I will try. But I must tell you that I will fail. Until your eyes have sparkled with tears at the sight of an iceberg peppered with penguins. Until a flock of Cape Petrels dances for you. Until the bow of your ship has moved in close enough to kiss the edge of a glacier. Until your senses have been exercised to their ultimate limits by a colony of Adelie Penguins. Until your heart has practically thumped its way out of your chest as you stared straight into the eyes of a Leopard Seal. ----- Until you've walked where ice is magnificent enough be a place on the map.....It is truly hard to imagine.

But we will do our best....

See the black lumps in this photo? EVERY BLACK LUMP IS AN ADELIE PENGUIN!

Now, imagine that you are standing a few feet from the edge of this astounding scene. Waves crash and stir bits of ice against the rocky shoreline like rhythmic music...your ears ring with the sound of it. Adelies are before you in numbers that are nearly incomprehensible...your nose wrinkles with the smell of it. The rough and tumble rocks of the island--and the occasional Adelie at your feet--make you aware of every footstep. And your soul weeps with the joy of it.

Antarctica: Outline of the trip

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: We traveled to the Antarctic on board the Clipper Adventurer from January 7 to 25, 2009, on a birding and wildlife expedition sponsored by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Before and after the voyage we were in Argentina, starting in the capital city of Buenos Aires and joining the ship in the southern outpost city of Ushuaia. The map below will help to put these points in a world perspective.

Points for reference: 1. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2. Ushuaia, Argentina. 3. Antarctic Peninsula.

The vast majority of expedition cruises to Antarctica go from South America to the Antarctic Peninsula, and the map shows why. South America extends much farther south than Africa or Australia, and the Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost point of the white continent, so the crossing is feasible for many kinds of ships. There are also some expedition cruises that go south from New Zealand and take in the subantarctic islands of that country, and a few cruises that go south through the bird-rich waters of South Africa to the continent's edge, and we would like to try those routes eventually. But so far, all five of my trips have originated in South America.

Most world maps (like the one above) show Antarctica as an ill-defined mass along the lower edge, so it's hard for most people to get an idea of the continent's size. Antarctica is huge -- near the size of Australia and Europe combined. It is roughly centered on the South Pole, and the interior of the continent is the coldest region on earth. We confess that, as naturalists, we're not very interested in visiting the South Pole; nothing lives there except a few dedicated scientists. Remarkably, the South Polar Skua has occurred there as a stray, having flown many hundreds of miles across lifeless ice and rock, but we'd rather watch birds like this out at the Antarctic coastline where they belong.

The majority of expedition cruises from Ushuia go straight across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula and back. But our trip was focused on birds and wildlife, so we took the longer route northeast to the Falkland Islands, farther east to remote South Georgia Island, then southwest to the Antarctic Peninsula and back north across the Drake Passage. On the voyage we spent eight full days at sea (enjoying fabulous seabirds, whales, and dolphins), and during the other ten days we made landings at no fewer than 18 sites. This was Kim's first trip to the region and I can say without hesitation that it was my best trip ever. In subsequent posts we'll be describing the experiences of the voyage in detail.

Antarctica: Day One, Pre-trip Birding in Ushuaia

From home base in Ohio, Kim and Kenn write: In terms of overall bird diversity, there tend to be fewer species as you go from the Equator toward the poles, and fewer species on islands than on equivalent mainland areas. Because of these basic trends, a trip to islands of the Antarctic region won't produce a huge list of bird species ... huge numbers of individuals, yes, and fascinating creatures to watch, but not a huge amount of variety. So birders headed for the Antarctic usually take advantage of South American stopovers to add more birds to their total trip lists.

We've already written about some of the birds we saw around Buenos Aires, and we saw more on the official pre-trip to Otamendi on January 5, but things really got underway on January 7th in Ushuaia. This city, located on the Beagle Channel in southernmost Argentina, prides itself on being at the "end of the Earth" -- or "Fin Del Mundo," as the signs say on the edge of town. Ushuaia has become a major stopover point for tourists, as almost all the cruises going to Antarctica make their turnarounds here.

Here's a distant view of the harbor at Ushuaia with a few of the cruise ships tied up at the dock. But on this day we took most of the group (from Victor Emanuel Nature Tours) out to the Tierra Del Fuego National Park to see some of the specialty birds of South America's southern tip.

Here's part of our group birding the edge of the marsh in

Tierra Del Fuego National Park.

Our friend, your friend, heck, it's everybody's friend, the Rufous-collared Sparrow.

We've seen these birds all over South America, but the ones here in the extreme south are slightly different, with a plainer gray look to the head. Plainer, yes. But, still kinda cute.

The local American Robin look alike--the Austral Thrush. Kim loves the name of this bird. This is obviously a juvenile, all decked out and bedazzled with spots galore.

One of many species of caracara (which is a really fun word to type, btw) the Chimango Caracara was the first life bird for Kim in Argentina, spotted from the plane as we landed in Buenos Aires back on January 1st.

The act is getting classier. This beautiful bird is the Patagonian Sierra-Finch. It was all over the National Park, frequenting camp sites, looking for scraps left behind by campers. It reminded Kim of a Mourning Warbler at first glance.

This bird was, without a doubt, a highlight for everyone in the group! The Magellanic Woodpecker is a glorious looking bird. In the genus Campephilus (yes, the same genus as the Ivory-billed) one thing that's particularly fun about this species is that the female is the really gorgeous one in the pair. She sports this amazing top-knot with a forward-curving crest of slightly curled feathers. The photo is of the male, but we had stunning looks at the female too. A hell of a time for one's camera battery to go dead. Wouldn't you say?! [Kim's screams of frustration echo through the night...]

On the way back into town we stopped the bus in the middle of the street to enjoy watching a small group of Austral Parakeets. Clambering about and performing impressive acrobatic manuevers among the branches of the Southern Beech Trees, they were a blast to watch. Even if we had to perform our own acrobatic manuevers in the bus seats to get in position to take this photo.

Back into Ushuaia, we birded a series of ponds and coastal lagoons on the edge of the city. This Crested Duck was one of several species of waterfowl that we saw.

The lovely Dolphin Gulls were a nice change of pace from looking at Ohio's rather drab and homely Ring-bills and Herring Gulls. [Kim's thought...Kenn asks for a disclaimer here.] Not quite as sharp as Heermann's Gulls, but close.

You are one day closer to BABY PENGUIN PICTURES!

Update from Antarctica

From the Clipper Adventurer in the Southern Ocean, approaching the Antarctic Peninsula, Kenn and Kim write: If you're reading this, we've just succeeded in connecting with the Internet again, and we were amazed to see all the comments posted regarding our bird puzzle feature! Thank you, everyone who looked at this puzzle and who commented on it. We appreciate your interest! Kim says we should make this kind of puzzle a monthly feature; does anyone else agree?

Anyway -- It appears that we won't be able to attach any photos to this message, so we'll just have to paint a picture with words for the moment. Today (Monday January 19) we were at sea all day, cruising south from the South Orkney Islands toward the Antarctic Peninsula. We saw no land today, but we saw hundreds of icebergs, some of them huge towering mountains of ice, others great flat tabular bergs more than a quarter of a mile across. Birds were not as abundant today as on some of our previous at-sea days, but we saw flocks of Cape Petrels and Southern Fulmars, scores of Wilson's Storm-Petrels and Black-bellied Storm-Petrels, and various other birds. Beautiful snow-white Snow Petrels were flying around many of the larger icebergs, and late in the day we were visited by a few strikingly patterned, fast-flying Antarctic Petrels. Most remarkable of all was a lone Emperor Penguin swimming in the open water, all alone, miles from any land.

Despite seeing such amazing birds, mammals stole the show today: the ship was able to maneuver slowly and respectfully close to several Humpback Whales and huge Fin Whales, and we watched some distant Orcas (Killer Whales) late in the day. At one point, passing a large area of floating pack ice, we saw several Leopard Seals hauled out on the ice -- these big seals are fast-swimming predators, the terror of all the smaller penguins, and the ones on the ice stared at us as we passed, their large reptilian heads frozen in permanent evil grins. We expect to see more Leopard Seals tomorrow, patrolling the waters just off the big Adelie Penguin colony on Paulet Island.

Internet access out here at sea is sporadic at best, but we'll write again when we can. Eventually (after we're back in Ohio, maybe) we'll post a lot of photos from the trip, and more descriptions of the birding highlights.

Antarctica: Day One, Beagle Channel and Magellanic Penguins

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: On the afternoon of January 7, after a day of birding around Ushuaia, we boarded the Clipper Adventurer. By about 7 p.m. we were under way, cruising east down the Beagle Channel. That might sound like a specialized offering on cable, but it’s actually a narrow strait of water running through the southern part of Tierra del Fuego. It was named for The Beagle, the ship on which Darwin traveled. Captain FitzRoy of The Beagle was responsible for exploring this waterway at the southern tip of South America during two voyages in the 1820s and 1830s.


During the evening we were mostly admiring the scenery -- just as Darwin did when he arrived here in 1833 -- but of course we were also birding, and people who stayed on deck late enough saw the first penguins of the trip, the first of the eight species that we would encounter. These were distant views of swimming birds, and observers were startled to hear that these mysterious distant "ducks" or "grebes" were really Magellanic Penguins. The photos below were all taken a couple of days later in the Falkland Islands.


The first thing to notice in this close-up portrait is the color of the background: green. The public may think of penguins as birds of the deep-freeze zones, but Magellanic Penguin belongs to the genus Spheniscus, a group of four penguins that are all limited to mild climates. These are Galapagos Penguin on the Equator, Humboldt Penguin in western South America, Jackass Penguin (yeah, that’s one of its official names) in southern Africa, and the Magellanic, which is found all around the southern coasts of South America. The latter has several large colonies in Argentina, and seeing it in the Beagle Channel was no surprise.
The second thing to notice is that the bird has, let’s face it, sort of a slow-witted expression. Penguins aren’t at their best on land anyway, but Magellanics come across as rather dim bulbs.

As we would see on the Falklands a couple of days later, it’s a common thing to see Magellanic Penguins standing around peering at holes in the ground. But they have a good excuse: that’s where they nest. They’ll dig burrows up to six feet deep, laying their eggs in a cavity at the end of the burrow, and tending their young underground until the chicks are large enough to be safe from most predators. Penguins in the Antarctic nest out in the open, but several kinds in the temperate zone are burrow nesters.

Here’s an adult Magellanic Penguin peering out of its burrow. The striking face pattern is a lot less obvious once the bird is in the shadows, and it may serve as disruptive coloration, breaking up the bird’s outline and making it less conspicuous.

Zooming in and overexposing another shot of a penguin in its burrow, we can see a couple of chicks lurking in the background.

And here’s a better look at a slightly larger chick out at the entrance to the nest burrow with one parent bird. The chicks are fed by both parents for at least two months before they molt out of their fluffy down and go out to sea.

This might seem like an odd juxtaposition, but I have to stop writing about baby penguins now because our rock band is performing in a couple of hours. The band has had only three practices in the eight days that Kim and I have been home, and there's a certain adrenaline rush involved in trying get mentally prepared and get back into rock-'n-roll mode. But I'll try to blog more about the Antarctic trip tomorrow.

Antarctica, Day Two: I.D. At Sea

From home base, Kenn writes: (now that I've been so cutely interrupted by Kim's last post ... That's the thing about Kimmer, I can't stay mad at her for more than a few seconds at a time.) On January 8, when I got out on deck around 5 a.m., we had left the Beagle Channel itself but the islands of Tierra del Fuego were still visible off the stern. Dozens of Sooty Shearwaters and Greater Shearwaters, plus various other seabirds, were around the ship. The last of the land soon disappeared behind us but we would continue to see large numbers of seabirds all day. Most seabirds are beautiful creatures and amazing masters of flight, and in addition, many of them present fascinating challenges in identification.

Check this out. I know you can’t see much detail, but this is an unaltered photo taken from the rail of the upper back deck of the ship, with six seabirds captured in the same frame. From left, they’re a young Wandering Albatross, a Brown Skua, three Greater Shearwaters, and a Northern Giant-Petrel. I’m not saying every moment was like this, but it was common to have 30 or 40 individual birds visible at once.

Watching birds here was good practice for identifying them back in North America. This Wilson’s Storm-Petrel nests only on islands in the far southern oceans, but it’s common in the northern summer off the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and Canada, and scarce off the coast of California.

Greater Shearwater is another bird we can see close to home in the northern summer. At that season it’s common off the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and Canada, but it nests only on islands in the South Atlantic.

Identifying seabirds can be tough, partly because the viewing conditions at sea can be challenging, partly because the differences can be subtle. Even on very large seabirds, the best field marks can involve small differences. Take a look at this Southern Giant-Petrel ...

... and then at this Northern Giant-Petrel. Both species are variable in plumage, and the best way to tell them apart is by the color of the tip of the bill: green on the Southern, red on the Northern. Those who are red/green color-blind, as some excellent birders are, might note that the Northern's bill tip looks darker than that of the Southern. (These are poor names, incidentally, since both species live only in the Southern Hemisphere and their ranges overlap extensively.)

Variation reaches an extreme in the beautiful Wandering Albatross. It has five distinct populations, nesting on different island groups, that are thought by some to be separate species. All of them vary at least a little with age, so there are a vast number of different plumages possible on these birds. Add to that the fact that Royal Albatross can be very similar to Wandering, it has two distinct populations that also might be separate species, and it also varies with age. The richly colored brown bird above is one of the youngest Wandering Albatrosses.

This bird, extensively white above, is an older Wandering Albatross and may be an adult male, although some old males can become even whiter than this (and some adult females might duplicate the appearance of the bird in the photo).

This partially brown bird is in the Wandering Albatross complex and is almost certainly a young bird, although there are a few populations in which even the adults show a lot of brown. We saw many such variations today, and enjoyed discussing the identification of all of them.

Fortunately, we often got to look at Wandering Albatross individuals from very close range!

For this voyage, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT) had filled 85 of the 110 spaces on the Clipper Adventurer. You can’t have 85 participants and only one or two leaders, so VENT had recruited a team of leaders, all of them long-time friends of mine, starting with Victor Emanuel himself. Victor has been a friend of mine since the mid-1970s, when I was a teenager and he hadn’t yet started his tour company. Also along as leaders were Barry Lyon, a seasoned world birder and one of the professionals in the VENT office; Louise Zemaitis, great all-around naturalist, teacher, and nature artist; Michael O’Brien, a bird identification expert and lead author of The Shorebird Guide; and Lars Jonsson, from Sweden, probably the most renowned bird painter in the world today, and a leading authority on bird identification as well. Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was supposed to have been a leader on this trip, and at the last minute he was unable to go. In his place, he sent Brian Sullivan, head of Project e-Bird for the lab, and another expert on bird identification, especially seabirds. Finally, the ship’s ornithologist, Geoff Carpentier from Canada, was also on deck, taking part in the discussions of identification from the perspective of his experience in these waters.

So a day at sea, looking at challenging or tricky seabirds, turned into a wonderful ongoing discussion and series of impromptu seminars in birding. For me, with my long-time interest in advanced bird identification, and for Kim, who is interested in all of these things and who was seeing some of these southern seabirds for the first time, this was a day of total fascination. Some people might imagine that all those hours on the open ocean could become boring, but for a birder, nothing could be further from the truth.

Antarctica, Day Three: Punks and Saints

From Home Base, Kenn and Kim write: We should state up front that the Falkland Islands (or, as the Argentinians would call them, Las Islas Malvinas) are best classified as part of the subantarctic region, not part of Antarctica itself. The islands lie east of the southern tip of South America, and we actually had to travel somewhat north from Ushuaia, Argentina, to get there. After being out at sea all day on January 8, we had the Falklands in sight by very early in the morning on January 9, and we made our first landing of the trip at Saunders Island, in the northwest part of the archipelago, early this morning.

Ferried ashore in the Zodiacs, the sturdy inflatable boats that are a mainstay of adventure cruising worldwide, we got an eyeful and earful of wildlife on Saunders Island. This fabulous first stop presented a series of spectacles that kept us gasping with delight for the entire morning. Magellanic Penguins (about which we wrote in our post of Feb. 6) were in the water and on the beach, to be upstaged by hundreds of Gentoo Penguins and dozens of King Penguins. We’ll write more about those soon. But the star penguins of the day were the bold, weird little Rockhopper Penguins. We knew that Saunders would be our main encounter with this species, so we all spent a lot of time watching them.

Rockhoppers DO hop on rocks. Their nesting colony on Saunders was high on a hillside, and the birds had to hop and waddle and scramble up a very steep rocky slope to bring food to their young. Fortunately, they seem to be pretty tough birds, able to make this arduous journey over and over during the nesting season. But the effort could explain their grouchy expressions.

Of course we shouldn’t assign human expressions to animals, but with the Rockhoppers it was almost impossible to resist the temptation. For example, we couldn't help wondering what this adult might be telling its fuzzy half-grown chick.

Everyone on these Antarctic cruises is instructed not to approach the wildlife - - to stay back at least 15 feet from the birds (or farther for some species). But if you stand still, some of the birds will walk up to you. The Rockhoppers seemed curious, in a grouchy way, waddling up to members of our group and staring at them as if to say, "what the hell ... ?"

Kim pointed out that, with their spiky hairdos and weird expressions, the penguins were misnamed; they really should have been called Punk-Rock Hoppers.

("Hey, human chick, you wanna step outside and repeat that?")

Of course, once we were into this mode of anthropomorphizing (that is, applying human characteristics to animals), it was hard to get out of it. Nesting on the same hillsides as the Rockhoppers were colonies of Black-browed Albatrosses. We had seen many of these at sea the day before (along with lesser numbers of the much larger Wandering Albatrosses). But here we were able to watch them up close, tending their young, and we were struck by how they seemed gentle, benign, even wise.

The Falkland Islands are a major nesting area for Black-browed Albatrosses. According to some estimates, 80 percent of the total world population nests here.

Their nests are built up of dried mud, and shaped like little volcanoes. In many of the nests we could see the single young, still covered with fuzzy grayish-white down. Almost every active nest was tended by one of the parents; presumably the other parent was away foraging at sea. We saw a few exchanges where one adult would come back with food for the young, and after various greeting rituals, the adult that had been there would leave.

Admittedly, the young were cute enough that they seemed worth guarding with care!

Maybe we can’t really tell what the adult albatrosses are thinking, but they do have beautiful faces. Can you deny the sense that these look like gentle giants?

Antarctica vs. Galapagos: clash of claims

Adelie Penguins: Cool birds, but they're not in a biodiversity hotspot

From Birding Central, Kenn writes: If you follow news of the natural world online, you’ve probably seen the stories within the last week: "Antarctic islands surpass Galapagos for biodiversity." The headline has been repeated on dozens of websites and blogs. Everyone is marveling at this news because the Galapagos Islands lie on the Equator, and the generally accepted wisdom has been that biodiversity is greatest in the tropics and decreases toward the poles. That the South Orkney Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, should support more species than the Galapagos Islands is an idea that seems totally amazing.

It would be amazing, if it were true. But it isn’t true.

We live in an era when information can be flashed around the globe in an instant, perpetuated and multiplied a millionfold, whether it’s accurate or not. If it’s a remarkable piece of information and it seems to come from a reliable source, it will be repeated verbatim forever.

Here’s the background. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Hamburg carried out a detailed study of life on the South Orkney Islands and in the surrounding seas, down to a depth of 1500 meters. Between their own findings and a search of published records, they documented 1224 species of animals in the area, including five species new to science. All of this is very impressive, and the researchers are to be congratulated for their discoveries. It’s important for us to know that biodiversity at the edge of the Antarctic is higher than previously believed.

However, there was a problem with a press release from the British Antarctic Survey on December 1, 2008. This press release mentioned the Galapagos comparison just as a brief aside, but other news stories made this the headline. NewScientist presented it this way: "Antarctic islands surpass Galapagos for biodiversity." PlanetEarth Online said: "More Biodiversity in Antarctica than the Galapagos." Science Daily and LiveScience both said: "Antarctica Has More Species Than Galapagos." Dozens of websites, blogs, and newspapers repeated variations of the same.

It simply isn’t true, and I’ll give you the data in a minute, but it’s odd to me that so many news outlets repeated this uncritically. Certainly any birder on the news desk would have questioned it. After all, birders tend to be more aware of the realities of the world than most nonbirders. And I know I’m not the only birder who has been to both the Galapagos and the Antarctic.

Yes, the Galapagos Islands are arid and isolated. Diversity is not overwhelming there. Putting aside migrants and strays, the number of nesting bird species on the Galapagos is only about 60 -- but on the South Orkneys, the number is fewer than 20. What about insects? Birders often notice insects, if only for the fact that they’re often good bird food. The Galapagos have only about 400 species of beetles, to mention one insect group, but I guarantee that the South Orkneys have fewer than that. What about plants? After all, biodiversity involves all living things, not just animals. I don’t have figures for the South Orkneys, but it sticks in my mind that the number of flowering plant species on the Antarctic Peninsula is two. The Galapagos, arid and isolated though they are, have at least 550.

In fact, the figure given for the South Orkney Islands study, 1224 species of animal life, falls far short of what’s on the Galapagos. A study by Stewart B. Peck published in 1997 listed 1859 species of marine invertebrates in Galapagos seas, 2257 species of invertebrates on the islands and in fresh waters, and 431 species of vertebrates, for a total of over 4500 species. With new discoveries in the last ten years, the current number would be even higher. Add in the 1467 species of plants, fungi, and lichens listed in the Stewart Peck study, and the Galapagos are home to over 6000 known species of living things. The 1200-plus species around the South Orkneys are impressive, all right, but they don’t surpass the Galapagos.

Please understand that I’m not trashing the Antarctic region. The South Orkneys may have fewer than 20 species of breeding birds, but these probably add up to well over a million nesting pairs. Kim and I are leaving for the Antarctic in less than a month, and we’re insanely excited to be going. But I predict that ten years from now, people will still be repeating this false idea that the Antarctic has more biodiversity than the Galapagos, and I’ll still be wondering: How could so many news outlets repeat this without checking its accuracy?

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.