Our latest trip: Puerto Deseado (S47.45
W65.55)
At the end of January we went back to
the USA to visit our family, refresh our family ties, and see our
friends. We flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina and from there to Trelew
to pick up our car parked at my uncle's house. After resting one day
we continued South to Puerto Deseado, a small city located South of
Golfo San Jorge. Before leaving Argentina we had arranged to meet in
Puerto Deseado with members of birdwatchers clubs from other parts of
the country, so we found people from Puerto Deseado, Comodoro
Rivadavia, Sarmiento, and Esquel.
We knew that this area was a good spot
for watching birds of all sorts, but the place exceeded our
expectations. The city is located at the mouth of the 'ria'. The
river running from the mountains
dried out some 12000 years ago and the
coastal area subsided giving way to an invasion of the sea over the
former river bed. Consequences: the sea inlet now spread for some 30
miles into the continent bringing with it all sorts of marine life,
including penguins, cormorans, seagulls, petrels, dolphins, and
seals.
We first day we took a boat to Penguin
Island, some 15 nm Southeast from Puerto Deseado. Apart from
adventurers from Spain, England, and Holland, the island was first
occupied by a seal oil factory. The Spaniards started the operation
around 1790 and killed some 30,000 seals per season. A few years
later they stopped it probably because the seal population was
exhausted.
The first thing we saw approaching the
island was the old lighthouse. Built in 1903 by local prison inmates
it is now out of service. Most of the island is populated by
Maguellan penguins, but there is also a significant colony of
Rockhopper penguins. On the other side of the island there is a male
seal colony, those that are either too old or too young to mate,
including an elephant seal. Among the flying population we saw a
variety of gulls, terns, skuas, petrels, swallows, and cormorants.
The round trip to the island takes about one hour. It was quite cold,
but the weak sun and the strong wing gave us a splendid bright red
suntan of which I am still recovering.
The second day the boat took us
westward through the ria. Now we got closer to the cormorant's nests,
built on the cliffs facing the ria. There we saw the imperial, real,
gray, and black cormorants, each one nicer than the other. There is
an important population of Commerson's dolphins and one of them came
to play around the boat. Unfortunately I could not take any good
picture of them. Along the ria we also saw plenty of Maguellan
penguins, seagulls, and seals.
In the canyons along the ria there is a
colony of owls (Great Horned Owl). This is the largets of all owls
and we had several nearby possing for us.
I found a good video of Penguin Island
on the web. You might enjoy spending some time with it.
The trip back to Esquel was long (some
12 hours) and tiresome. We are still trying to recover from so much
boat and car punishment but happy for the adventure.
A view of the ria.
A couple of Rockhopper penguins
A young Rockhopper ready to go fishing
Another Rockhopper in the process of changing feathers
Red-legged cormorant
A Black Oystercatcher
A falcon nesting on top of a bush
The Great Horned Owl is the largest of the family, some 50 cm tall.
A Black Widow waiting for us in the bushes.
This is part of the colony of male seals
Kelp gulls and a youngster
South american terns
Magellan penguins with the Penguin Island lighthouse in the background.
A Black Cormorant
