Kona

As some of you may know I am now a dog owner. I found Kona as a courtesy post on petfinder and drove down to North Carolina the first weekend of April to get him. Since then Kona and I have been nearly inseparable! He is absolutely fantastic and I can take him anywhere. Including on my trip to Alaska (next post I write)!

Birds Birds Birds!

This post is for all my fellow bird nerds. One of the great aspects of my job is all the travel I get to do and all the birds I get to see in the process.

Antarctica: From October 2009-February 2010 I was living at Palmer Station Antarctica and this past year Novemeber 2010 to January 2011, I was on a two month cruise along the west coast of Antarctica. 

Adelie Penguins: Most of these pictures were taken at the Adelie Penguin colony at Torgerson Island. 

Chinstrap Penguins

Quite the treat! We found an Emperor penguin down by Charcot Island. Typically Emperor's are not seen that far North.

Gentoo Penguins. Last pic is a mom and two chicks at Port Lockroy Antarctica.

Antarctic Sheathbill adult and a rare sighting of a chick!

Antarctic Tern

Shag

Giant Petrol

Skua, these guys are pretty intense. There are superb hunters and often prey on penguin eggs and newborn penguin chicks. They are also quite aggressive towards humans.

Chile: At the end of my first season in Antarctica our cruise ended in Punta Arenas, Chile where I was able to go to a Magellanic Penguin colony. It was absolutely amazing to see penguins wandering around in a field with rabbits hopping about. Not quite what comes to mind when you think of penguins.

I also saw a Southern Caracara, not the best pictures through the dirty bus windows.

New Zealand: This year after Antarctica at the end of January I had the pleasure of spending some time on the South Island of New Zealand. I rented a camper van and spent 10 days driving all over and tried to document all the birds I saw. The first was a Quail family while I was hiking in Abel Tasman.

Weka aka the island chicken and her chick.

Black Swans

Oystercatchers

Yellow-Eyed Penguin. This was very cool towards the end of my trip I found out about a lighthouse on the coast that had setup a small bird blind. The Yellow-Eyed Penguin is considered the worlds rarest penguin and spends most of it time at sea feeding. Your best chances of trying to see them are around dusk when they return home.

Kubb!

So what happens when your on a small island at the bottom of the world and need a good distraction? You play Kubb!!! Kubb is a game that dates back to the Viking Ages and originated in Sweden. It is a lawn game just like horseshoes however the objective is to knock over all your opponents wooden blocks by throwing wooden sticks at them. Once all your opponents blocks are knocked over you then have to knock over the King which stands in the middle of the field. To simplify you throw shortened broom stick handles  at 2x2 blocks. It turned out to be a really fun game however at points it almost felt like dodgeball trying to avoid wooden sticks being thrown at you as hard as possible. Get ready folks I plan on starting a Kubb trend once I am back in the states!

Happy Holidays!

On Christmas Eve we were all lucky enough to be faced with a beautiful day. The prior weeks had been filled with clouds, precipitation and very high winds but when we woke up on Christmas Eve we had bluebird blue skies, winds around 4 knots and the temps right around 40 degrees F which is down right balmy in Antarctica. So Alex, Brian and myself decided to take full advantage of this moment so we took some holiday photos. Essentially what we did was wrangle an iceberg. This was a small bergy bit about 5-6 feet from shore so Alex waded out to it and climbed aboard. He then attached an ice screw and threw Brian and I a rope and we pulled the bergy bit a bit closer to shore. Brian and I really had no desire to get as wet as Alex. After we were all on the iceberg we celebrated the victory with some great photos. Alex has a nice blog post showing the steps we used to make this photo shoot possible as well as the unfortunate after shots of me not staying so dry once it was time to go back to shore. Ice Wranglers

Polar Plunge!

There is a tradition here at Palmer that when fellow station members leave or when the boat that brought you to Palmer leaves you do a Polar Plunge from the pier. Well I didn't plunge when the boat that brought me here left because it was far to early in the morning. So the next opportunity that presented itself was when our station manager left which also happened to be the same day RU27 successfully crossed the Atlantic. With Scarlet's success it was definitely a day for celebrating so I decided to take the plunge!

No comment on my jump position!

Rex collecting style points!

PQ diving right in!

It was by far the coldest experience of my life. The water was right around 0 degrees Celsius and instantly your body is numb and prickly. The worst part is that in order to get out of the frigid water you have to climb a ladder that seems to never end. Then you get to run barefoot through the snow to the hot tub. The hot tub sounds good in theory but initially your so cold and the water is so warm its actually rather painful until you get used to it. I am not sure if I will partake in this event ever again but at least I can say I have done it once!

Ahhh nice and warm in the pickle barrel!