Steeple Jason - A Wildlife Paradise Post 2

Steeple Jason has plenty of other wildlife too. There were colonies of rockhopper, gentoo and magellanic penguins. The rockhoppers are scattered amongst the albatross chicks and here is a picture of one with its red eyes and distinctive head features.

The island is owned by the U.S. based charity World Conservation Society. Two years ago they built accommodation there so we were living in a well equipped house with a view over towards the sea. We could watch a gentoo penguin colony and see them porpoising in through the sea after a day of fishing (see picture at bottom). The striated caracaras (also known as johnny rooks) were never too far away and noisy at that. They are very inquisitive and they will sit all around you if you stop for a minute. Here is a picture of one flying. Also worth looking at is the tussac grass which grows all over the island and is very thick in places.

The journeys there and back were pretty exciting. It was my first experience of one of the tiny 8 seater Islander aircraft which buzz all around the islands according to need. It was then a 4 hour boat journey to Steeple Jason. On the boat we saw sei whales, peales dolphins and seals. On the return flight our plane broke down. One of the brakes failed on landing at Fox Bay (though I was not aware of it at the time) so we spent an afternoon there in a local woman's house drinking tea and getting more of an insight of life in camp whilst the problem was fixed.

Steeple Jason - A Wildlife Paradise Post 1

I was lucky enough to visit the remote island of Steeple Jason in the far north west of the Falkland Islands with a couple of the blokes from Falklands Conservation a couple of weeks ago. This was part of my job of getting to know the islands better. I had visited on the cruise last January and not many people are fortunate enough to visit once let alone twice. It is an unspoilt wildlife paradise with many thousands of black browed albatrosses, the largest such colony in existence anywhere in the world.

We were there to do ringing of some of the chicks about to fledge, to do some counting of various parts of the colony and to fit 3 chicks with satellite tracking systems. The ringing was dirty work for Isaac and Nic and I was pleased to get the task of writing the results. We were so fortunate with the weather - it was calm and sunny. This meant that the work was done much more quickly than if it had been windy. It was possible to walk amongst the strange mud pot nests on which the chicks sit. Their parents would come back to feed them. A few had failed becasue they had come off their nests and then their parents will not feed them or due to predators. We watched the chicks exercising their wings. It was really funny to watch the adults landing - they ungracefully fall flat on their faces. It was also amusing to watch the adults trying to take off on a windless day - many did not quite make it and would come crashing down into the nesting area to the consternation of the chicks sitting on their mud pots.

They will have migrated by now and will not be back for 5 or 6 years. A few years later they will come back to their birthplace to breed.

Masked Ball

A short while ago, I went to a masked ball at Stanley Town Hall with a group of teachers. I had not long returned from Steeple Jason and Stanley still felt like bright lights big city after the remoteness and quiet of my 5 days away! I was reliably informed that formal ball wear was not required but any dress would do. That was just as well as I am still waiting for my stuff to turn up on the ship from Blighty. So on the Saturday I set to making a mask with my basic ingredients of cardboard, glitter and feather type material. It came out ok except that the glitter did not stay put for very long and it went all over my face and hair and I am sure that I will be finding it lurking in the carpets of my house for many months to come! It was a fun night out with tapas and wine accompanied by music from some secondary school pupils. After that, there was a DJ who played a variety of music so we danced a bit too.

I am sure that there will be many more events to look forward to in the Town Hall.

Goose Green and Darwin

I went to the annual Goose Green ram sale a couple of weeks back. Being the townie that I am, one ram looks much the same as another to me. Anyhow, I was reliably informed that they are all different and the way that farmers choose to buy them is by looking at their teeth (which gives an indication of health), checking their fleeces for no black spots at all (no good having lambs that have anything other than a white fleece so that the wool can be dyed) and for the number of microns in the fleece (the lower the number the better). The farmers are always striving to improve the quality of their sheep for producing wool so it is important that they choose well. They had come to the event from all over East and West Falkland.

I had a look around the settlement of Goose Green and the 2 pictures give you an idea of what it is like. One is of an old stone cottage and the other is the village hall where all the residents of the settlement were locked up (including a baby) for about 6 weeks in 1982. I understand that the conditions were quite grim. Today it has a store and a small school.






After the look around Goose Green, I went to the Argentine Cemetery at Darwin. The site of this was understandably controversial with the locals and it looks a bit bleak. It was thought that the dead would be repatriated but this did not happen. Many of the crosses are marked with "Soldato Argentino" which just means Argentine soldier and so is unidentified. Even though this memorial was only built a few years ago, replacing an earlier simpler version, the paint is peeling on many of the crosses and the granite has been subject to quite a bit of weathering. The materials chosen were not perhaps ideal for the Falklands climate. It is going to be tidied up a bit by the Falkland Islands Government this year.