Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha
We awoke to find Expedition Leader Matt Drennan muttering in disbelief over the beautiful clear and calm weather that greeted us, and warning us that “It can change in an instant.” No doubt it can, but it didn’t! We were joined by a group of residents of Tristan for our trip over to Nightingale Island, some 27 nautical miles away. Nightingale Island is uninhabited, but traditionally visited by Tristaners for harvesting eggs and young birds (mostly great shearwaters that nest in enormous numbers there and then disperse over the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Greenland!) Over the past few days we have seen the sea temperature fall and new bird species surround our ship, but nothing could have made the transition more dramatic than the party waiting to greet us at our rocky landing: penguins (known in Tristan English as pinamins). This is a rather special subspecies of the rockhopper penguin, characterized by long plumes above and behind the red eyes. This subspecies occurs only on the islands of the Tristan group and a few isolated islands to the south. They are almost tragicomic in their seriousness. Scrambling up the hill between enormous tussocks of grass, we came upon nesting Antarctic skuas (no surprise – earlier we found them commencing nesting on our ship!) and yellow-nosed albatrosses, each with an elegant yellow mid-dorsal line on the dark bill. Those of us who chose to avoid the tussocks on Nightingale Island were able to enjoy penguins on the rocks and albatrosses soaring gracefully overhead from a comfortable seat on a Zodiac.
In returning to Tristan we passed by aptly-named Inaccessible Island. The time allowed us the opportunity to engage our guests in conversation, learning about life on their isolated island home. We returned our guests to “the settlement”, sent them ashore with a rousing “Three cheers for Tristan”, and pointed our ship toward the Southern Ocean and the adventures that await us there.
We awoke to find Expedition Leader Matt Drennan muttering in disbelief over the beautiful clear and calm weather that greeted us, and warning us that “It can change in an instant.” No doubt it can, but it didn’t! We were joined by a group of residents of Tristan for our trip over to Nightingale Island, some 27 nautical miles away. Nightingale Island is uninhabited, but traditionally visited by Tristaners for harvesting eggs and young birds (mostly great shearwaters that nest in enormous numbers there and then disperse over the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Greenland!) Over the past few days we have seen the sea temperature fall and new bird species surround our ship, but nothing could have made the transition more dramatic than the party waiting to greet us at our rocky landing: penguins (known in Tristan English as pinamins). This is a rather special subspecies of the rockhopper penguin, characterized by long plumes above and behind the red eyes. This subspecies occurs only on the islands of the Tristan group and a few isolated islands to the south. They are almost tragicomic in their seriousness. Scrambling up the hill between enormous tussocks of grass, we came upon nesting Antarctic skuas (no surprise – earlier we found them commencing nesting on our ship!) and yellow-nosed albatrosses, each with an elegant yellow mid-dorsal line on the dark bill. Those of us who chose to avoid the tussocks on Nightingale Island were able to enjoy penguins on the rocks and albatrosses soaring gracefully overhead from a comfortable seat on a Zodiac.
In returning to Tristan we passed by aptly-named Inaccessible Island. The time allowed us the opportunity to engage our guests in conversation, learning about life on their isolated island home. We returned our guests to “the settlement”, sent them ashore with a rousing “Three cheers for Tristan”, and pointed our ship toward the Southern Ocean and the adventures that await us there.
