Up a tower

 I have been working on clearing a tower of an old decommissioned weather station. With the nice weather today I finally finished the project up and took my camera up for the view.

 What a beautiful day!

Home sweet station!

Giant Petrel Chicks

I was able to go out with the birders to Humble island to help/watch them with their rounds. This time I got to see the giant petrel chicks, I think they are my favorite of the birds around Palmer.

There were a bunch of elephant seals hanging out on the beach in a big pile.

 These giant petrel chicks are not quite the size of small turkeys yet but they are getting there.

 Once a giant petrel couple is able to lay and hatch an egg they have a near 100% success rate of fledgling their chick.

 They are so dinosaur like. 

And fluffy!

Eclipse

 It has been cloudy and rainy for weeks and is finally cleared up just in time for the eclipse!

 I made a pin hole box to see the eclipse through.

We also had welding glass to look through, this is just after the max.

Calving

I caught this sequence week or so ago. The glacier has been very active lately.

Joubins Round Two or The Truth About Penguin Colonies

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I went out to the Joubins again to replace my temperature sensor and then spent the day wandering around islands while the birders did their thing.

This was a cool island because there were wide walkways between taller rock outcroppings where the penguins had their nests so I could walk around the island without disturbing the penguins and take pictures of them from below while still standing. Crouching to get on a penguins level in slippery penguin poo isn't preferable.

The truth about penguin colonies is that they smell. Quite bad. Its a lot of poo, krill poo which is extera gross. The kind of smell that gets in your nostrils and your clothes and feels like it'll never leave.

And the penguins just lay in it.

If you pick and choose which ones to take pictures of you can get some cleaner looking ones but that's really just hiding the gross reality that penguins and poo covered and stinky until they learn how to feed themselves.

The gentoo penguins have a huge variation in the size of their chicks, this one is almost fully fledged.

It's a rough life.

These are the youngest ones I found.

Foot!

Gaggle of poo covered teenagers.

Starting to loose the fluff.

Moss lava.

We found a really one cache on top of one of the island from the navy days.

I don't think these tools would be useful anymore if you got stranded here.

Here is what the Joubins look like, there are about 130ish island in the group.

View back towards station.

We are starting to see more fur seals.

A giant petrel chick!

Joubins

 I had a temperature sensor go down on a remote automatic weather station. So I hitched a ride with the birders because they were already going out to check on some penguins.

 The joubins and a group of about 140 islands that are about 9 miles to the south (7 miles outside the normal boating area).

 The view back to Anvers Island was amazing.

 It was a perfect sunny and beautiful day.

 The birders in their boats waiting for me to recover the broken temperature sensor.

 A fur seal had hauled itself way up onto the island I was climbing up and it growled at me like a dog, it's first fur seal I've seen so I wasn't expecting it at all.

 After I recovered my sensor we went to different island so the birders could do their counts and tags.

 The adelie penguins are starting to lose their cute down and are starting to look a little rough.

 Take a good look at this berg, it calved about 10 minutes later and rolled over.

 Chinstrap penguin chicks!

 Gentoo penguin chicks!

 Rough day in the poo-mud.

 Another gentoo baby,

 And more chinstraps!

 And one lone Macaroni penguin hanging out in the shade.

 Four species all living on one island nesting amongst each other.

 A large chuck feel off the top of this berg and made a splash about half the height of the berg. The loss of the chuck unbalanced the berg and it turtled.

 And it exposed the bottom of the iceberg. The penguins did not like the booming noise of the berg and they all shrieked and called out.

 These chinnys were doing their dance.

 I really like this Gentoo's fluffy leg feathers.

 The bottom of the turtled berg.

 Really neat pattern.

 Different perspective on the main land.

 We took two boats out. It was so glassy and beautiful out all day.

 Station is just to the right of island in the middle.

 Back on station. The lighting with the broken clouds was cool.

 There were a couple weddell seals taking naps on the snow that is left int he back yard.

 They look very comfortable and happy!