Desire the Right

In 1596 a British Sailor named John Davis aboard the Desire spotted for the first time the Falkland Islands.  It was nearly 80 years later when another Brit, a man named John Strong actually landed on the island, and curiously the first settlement on the island was by a French Explorer, a man named Bougainville in 1765.  British troops in 1832 and 1833 removed an Argentine occupation and began a 185 year protest by the Argentines as to the rightful ownership of the islands, which remain British, despite a 1982 war.
       The British Overseas territory now has the motto "Desire the Right" in honor of that first ship firmly stated on their flag which also has the Union Jack and a sheep on it.  The are 3400 residents and many tens of thousands of sheep that make the island home.
       With this in mind, three days ago, our expedition mad four stops on the islands, on the islands of New Island, West Falkland, and Saunders island, all remote places.  We met the owner of Dunbar Farm, a French woman named Mary Paul who came to the southern ocean to live on a sail boat and ended up buying a 12,000 acre sheep farm, that features 4500 sheep, 6 dogs, and thousands of penguins.  The owner is a relative of a crew member on the ship.

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She described her ordeal of living here and the local people.  I also had a nice chat with David, the owner of Saunders island, on the beach.  We talked about the island and their experiences during the war, which never really came to their side of the islands, although there was a plan by the Argentines to round up and kill all of them, they were ready to at least try to give themselves a sporting chance with the firearms they had at that farms, but suspected they'd end up being bombed.  Luckily that never happened.  They feel the dispute is far from over.

My wife was looking at the "gift shop' the back of a Defender FWD vehicle and this is the last picture picture of her carbon fiber walking stick, she left it leaning against the back of the Land Rover 

 We did buy a nice hat.  We were more worried about the wet landing to get back to the ship, in which the waves went over our boots, oh well, at least we got some use out of it

 They even rent out this little shack.  It is currently rented to four Germans for the week, Oddly, it is booked until 2023.  I guess this is a destination.  It looks a bit bleak for a destination vacation.  Maybe the inside is nicer.

The weather was true Falklands, rain, sun, and wind up to 40 mph, it changed every hour on the hour.   It was a place that before this, was only on the map.  This wasn't a bucket list item, but seeing penguins were.  We saw five species of Penguins.

gentoo penguin

king penguin

macaroni penguin

Magellanic penguin

Southern rockhopper penguin

They were all cool birds and we saw their breeding areas, the gentoo chicks were the most active walking up to you and giving you a weird look or they were heading off into the sea

There were some other cool birds around

Black chinned siskin, this was the only one seen

blackish cinclodes (tussuckbird)

Blackish oystercatcher

brown skua

Dark faced ground tyrant which I also saw on the ship, as 3 flew out and cruised around for a couple of days

falkland steamer duck, it was cool to see them "steam", as they are flightless and kick up water like steam when they are chasing each other

Magellanic oystercatcher

Striated caracara

sadly, we did not go to anyplace that had the endemic Cobb's wren, which is either a species or a subspecies of House wren, but as I said, one cannot get them all and we did pretty good, I'm now at 141 lifer additions, but the question is, how can I drink that much beer?  This is a French  boat and they mostly have wine but all in all.  It was a good visit, save for the walking stick.  Some different views with us in them

Now it is off to South Georgia, cruising into the high seas of the Roaring 40s,  

I'll be on point watching for cool seabirds and trying to stay warm exposed on the deck to the cold winds of the south Atlantic.  I'll be desiring my own right----identifying the right Giant petrel, are they northern or southern, and the right and correct albatross, Royals or wandering, or the right prion, only God can identify prions and as I said, below 50 there is no God, so I guess even He doesn't know

Cheers, 

Olaf

The End of the Earth

Ushuaia, Argentina
This city is the second farthest south inhabited village on the planet Earth, it is called the end of the road as, Argentina Route 3, ends a little west of the city.  It was founded in 1884, except that when it was founded, 300 people already lived there as British missionaries had come 15 years earlier.  It is hard to know what is anti-British propaganda and what is real in Argentina.  The Argentines still claim the Malvinas are theirs despite the fact that they lost a war over them and almost all of the residents of the Falklands voted to stay British.  The Argentines claim the vote was rigged and have signs like this on busses, in the airport, on the roads, in the stores, and on the schools

We did not come down here the solve political issues, we came down here to bird and to connect with our trans-Atlantic expedition aboard the LeLyrial, a French ship making an expedition west.

It had rained in this southern terminus of America for something like 50 days.  It was 48 degrees as it was always 48 degrees here in the summer, before winter comes in a month or so and they get three feet of snow.  For us, the weather cleared and it made for great birding.  We spent 48 hours searching the few miles of roads and hiking the trails in the park here which at the few vistas was ran over with buses of day trip tourists from cruise ships.  We met lots of European youth on Patagonia hikes and camping trips but on the trails we found not a single human.  This was great as it didn't take us very long to find one of the most sought after birds in the Americas...the Magellanic woodpecker.  In fact, we saw three.

An impressive bird and the single thump of the male on a tree was the loudest thing i'd ever heard.

We then stumbled upon the local hummer, a green-backed firecrown, which when I heard the chirp, made me think, a hummer...here...?  But then we finally saw it and got a photo.

We then made a list, to find, searched for habitat and started ticking birds...

austral parakeets

long-tailed meadowlark

Magellanic oystercatcher

I spotted my lifer penguin, a Magellanic penguin

They have cool geese and ducks down here including this strange flightless steamer duck

they still have glaciers here...

 cool cormorants like this imperial cormorant

 with over thirty lifer birds in 48 hours it was finally time to find our ship, the La Lyrial, for what the captain called an expedition. The captain greeted us by saying...'Below 40 degrees south there is no law; below 50 degrees south there is no God'

The La Lyrial at port, Ushuaia, March 2, 2019

We would be sailing the Roaring 40s, and as the Bad weather man currently having nice weather, was it the calm before the storm?  At least we would eat well, it turned out the captain of our liferaft was the head chef who was introduced as the most important person on a French ship, but who would save the wine?  There have been other ships to sail from here, The HMS Beagle twice.

           When the then 44-year old light cruiser the ARG General Balgrano left port in Ushuaia, Argentina in April 26, 1982, it had already had a long history.  The ship formerly known as  the USS Pheonix had been at port in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked and it was not hit.  It survived the entire war receiving nine battle stars and then in 1948 was sold to the Argentine Navy.

            On March 3, 2019, our ship the Le Lyrial, entered the Beagle Channel (one of the three passages between the the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and exited it into the Atlantic ocean just as the Belgrano did bound northeastward towards the Falkland Islands and the start of our expedition and a trans Atlantic croissing.

            Back in 1982, what happened next will always be under some dispute.  The Belgrano stopped south of the Falklands and patrolled with three other ships and was monitored by a British submarine.  A few days later, an order was given by the Argentine admiral that the ship would support military action in Falklands which had been invaded a month earlier, and then fearful of this, the British attacked the ship and it was hot by two torpedoes and sunk, just under 300 Argentines died as a result.  About half of the casualties of the entire Falklands War.  A few months later, the British retook control of the Island group and Argentina left in failure.  

           well, it was good to leave Argentina for us, no matter what happens as our travelling companions, Don and Nancy broke their bathroom, due to a towel drier incident, and it was only a matter of time before our car's brakes failed and we'd roll down a hill into a shop.

Even my penguin Leroy after trying to fly in Buenos Aires, and I was just able to catch him in the nick of time...

Learned that the local ships had some other issues, he is a troublesome penguin...

that Leroy....hopefully he'll keep us out of trouble, as he went birding with us the day we got the hard to get woodpeckers so he has been lucky in the field, but he just hikes a little slow.

I hope our ship has a better fate.

Olaf

All the screaming and Gathering of Firewood

On January 27, 2013, the black-bellied whistling duck became the number one bird on my life list, as I flushed a flock in Santa Ana NWR (Texas).  It was the top bird as it was the top bird in taxonomic order.   It replaced a Fulvous whistling duck I had seen 49 days earlier in Florida.  This duck began my list every time I looked at it for a total of 2218 straight days until yesterday.
      We were driving to a place called Laguna Rocha and the ladies needed to find a bush as we were out on a dirt road about 60 miles west of Brazil and both bushes and bathrooms were in short supply.  I scanned a field and out there was this huge bird, I had no idea what it was and then, there was another in the pasture on the other side.  It was kind of a big and ugly bird and then I looked it up. The name-- southern screamer jumped out at me as an odd name and then it saw me, and I learned why it had earned its name. It sounds like a goose got stepped on by a very large foot.   I took pictures and I added it to my list and guess what, this species comes before waterfowl.  The event made me smile.  It is an event that no one cares about including most birders but there I was, with a new leading bird.
      Southern screamer is a name that would be better put to be the title of a Faulkner novel.  It would be about some terrible Mississippi family that killed college students at Oxford area near where Faulkner taught....or it could be a bird in South America....
      There are lots of birds down here with very cool or odd names.  The screamer is great but what about the FIREWOOD GATHERER?  Don't you picture and even bigger, more fierce looking bird?
In reality....

Kind of an unimpressive bird with a big sounding name, firewood gatherer, it looks like a small meadowlark

Then we got the wren-like rushbird, this acts like a very shy marsh wren, sounds like a rail, and it was an act of courage from snake attacks to even get this one out

All and all, despite the new language and names, we've been behaving ourselves.  After getting in the middle of a TV episode, and then today getting in the middle of a fashion shoot at a arboretum, we even photographed a streaked flycatcher, well I did as my other two photographers were setting up their tripods as the bird flew back into the tree deep in cover.

As we watched (again the ladies were in the bathroom), the fashion photographer photoed pretty girls in a doorway with revealing clothing.  We were standing 20 feet away.  The ladies changed behind a bush, and had on nothing else underneath.   Leave men alone and stuff like this happens.  When Don Harrington suggested if he could photo the ladies with his large 600 mm lens on a tripod, using hand motions, they shook their heads and everybody went to shoot at another location, quite quickly I may add.

"Just asking." he said to me, but we got two birds there so all was well.

     Uruguay has some of the worst marked roads anywhere and in Punta del Este even with Siri, we got really lost.  It kept wanting to take us back to where we started, and then today, while in a small park, maybe 500 acres with a hotel in the middle and with a map, we ended up lost and going the wrong way on one way roads and on roads that were only for pedestrians.  We came up to find rheas, but I was following an ebird post that was an errant or miss entered post, we could not find any open ground, unless we could find the top of a tree and scan the horizons.

      Don was using his translator program to translate, "help, I'm held captive against my will."  He kept threatening to play it to anyone passing by or standing outside, luckily, the program uses a different dialect of Spanish.

      It was a waste of a day so I amused myself looking at bees and rhinoceros beetles

Then dejected, I drove us all home.  Somewhere south of where there had ever been any ebird posts for rheas my wife in the back seat yelled, "stop!  BACK UP!  Olaf's side."

    I'm perplexed as to what she had seen.  I asked but she couldn't spit it out. The last cry for stop was for a house cat.  She is keeping a mammal list to spite us.  we'd already had a sheep call so I was hesitating.  But then, I could not believe my eyes, right next to the road was a flock of greater rhea.

    My heart nearly stopped, as we had given up on this bird, my wife got a kudos, a big kudos, we got the bird and she saved the day.  The getting lost and the 100 mile wild rhea chase was now forgotten.

I looked to the other side and got a bonus bird...

a grayish baywing on a weed, you got to like two-fer stops and bonus birds.  

         The rheas ran off after everyone got photos, well my wife doesn't carry a camera but the Harringtons and I did.  Then I entered the birds to my list, the greater rhea jumps to first on my list, sorry screamer, your stint on the top...only for one single day is over.  We'll see if I can get something higher on this trip, but as only two species higher, both types of ostrich, it won't happen tomorrow, that I can guarantee.

  

Besides trouble finding lunch stops, we've had a marvelous bbq, and good food.  It is very safe here despite the unmarked roads, as luckily the traffic is light.  Like everywhere, guys on motorcycles yell things at us as we look funny to people, what sane person birds?   It cooled off today, so no more 90s, just 70s, and in three days as we begin our journey into Argentina, its going to get colder, much colder.

      We have seen a slew of good and new birds, exciting and beautiful birds and enjoyed a wonderful country, one few from the US ever get to see.   It is rolling hills and mixed fields and scrub.

Here are a few of the last two days birds:

fork-tailed flycatcher, showy here or at home somewhere as a vagrant

giant wood-rail, these things....I almost hit one with a car today

More giant things...the Giant Tegu lizard, which can be house broken, they say, I wasn't inviting this one in to find out

Maguari stork, which most closely related to the white storks of Europe, ones in cartoons and seen by me on roof tops in Germany.  Their common ancestor was a now extinct stork from North America they say that got a round during the ice age and then led to these two species

great Pampa finch

plumbeous ibis, what a mean looking ibis

white monjica, how is that coloring help with anything besides breeding?

Don taking photos of black-necked swans

Nancy taking a photo of white monjita in a tree

I take a random shot at a swallow to test the focus and it is a white rumped swallow, a lifer bird

white spotted woodpecker in almost no light

We've found a great place, but our time here is running short, tomorrow a last big push birding and then we go to Montevideo, a town I've always wanted to see, and then we take a ship across the River Platte to Argentina.  More as I see fit to post it. got a lot of birds and great stories and to be honest, we haven't really got anywhere "great" yet, as who would have visiting Uruguay on a bucket list for 35 years?

Only Olaf

I'm off to gather firewood for a BBQ, I here some birds around here can help and then I need to scream for some matches...or something like that

Cheers!

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