Best day thus far. We dropped Ted and party off early near the Shackleton Gap so that they could get more ski practice, and then Jerome left David and I at Salisbury Plain. We went ashore in a near-whiteout, but the weather alternated between snow and sun all day, so it was both beautiful and exhilarating. The king penguin colony is smaller now than it was in January, I suppose due to many of the adults being out to sea, but the chicks (who have been here throughout winter) all stand shoulder to shoulder in giant groupings, making for some really cool patterns against the landscape.
After picking the rest of the group up Jerome returned to get David and I, and we then headed across the bay to search for wandering albatross. For the most part we saw only chicks, but they were well worth the visit. The wandering albatross chicks are born in fall and spend the winter here, so these chicks were nearly full-grown and were testing their wings whenever the wind came up. As a gust would hit them they would stretch out their three meter wings, flapping in the nest with their down shaking — it looked like a happy time for them. As we were returning to the beach a giant petrel, one of South Georgia’s more skittish birds, took an interest in me and ambled across the snow, finally settling down about two feet away. I sat with him a bit, and when I got up rather than running away he followed me further down the trail before visiting Shane and eventually Mike. All in all a lot of tremendously cool experiences.
