Salisbury Plain & Prion Island
The Great Southern Ocean is a realm of superlatives. In its landscapes we have seen mountains to challenge every range in the world, icebergs to challenge every mountain, and in its wildlife, scenes of poignant delicacy and unspeakable savagery. Yet nothing compares to the wildlife of South Georgia.
We landed at Salisbury Plain. Even before we launched our Zodiacs, we saw penguins lining the shore in regiments. Once on the beach, hoards of King penguins greeted us. Every King merits an hour of contemplation. Their backs are an argent lattice, their throats a tropical sunrise, their heads bold tangerine on jet, and their eyes a baleful Cretaceous stare. Glancing up from each remarkable vision, we found it multiplied by the score, by the hundred, and many thousand-fold. Penguins were rising from the waves, bickering, preening, and striking every kind of statuesque pose. But this was just the beginning.
Above the beach we were confronted by the penguins’ breeding colony. Not colony but empire, as black and orange stretched away in unbelievable profusion. Penguins plodded up and down, or contemplated one another in exclusive quartets. They nodded and bowed in ritualistic displays, pecked and battered each other, or incubated with stoic gravity. They lifted their heads and uttered weird, vibratory trumpeting calls, and chicks answered with calculatedly plaintive whistles. Meanwhile, fur seals, ever cute and mean-tempered, huffed and snapped at us from the tussock grass, elephant seals sprawled in sumptuous filth, and skuas patrolled overhead, ever eager to exploit the unwary. Time, time, we needed time. And we had it. Time to contemplate the fecundity, time to tread the muck, time to consider the beauty again and again.
Just off Salisbury Plain lies Prion Island, a tiny fortress of tussock grass. And sadly, even here, such fortresses are necessary. Like many an island paradise, South Georgia suffers a nasty infection of rats. Its effect was hardly noticeable to us until we reached Prion. And here, endemic pipits gleaned morsels from the sea wrack, or fluttered about the grass tufts. These were only the most visible of a variety of birds whose tussock-nesting habit makes them, elsewhere, vulnerable to rat attack. We enjoyed the pipits, and flocks of terns, and gangs of fur seals by Zodiac.
But the real reason for our visit lay atop the isle. Climbing boardwalk to the island’s summit we found a nesting Wandering albatross. Of course the bird was enormous. Its snowy purity was accented by a few flecks of black at wing and tail, and by its beak, big as a hotdog, in delicate shell-pink. So sure was the bird, seated at the center of the world, that it deigned to give us only an occasional glance, each seeming beneficent and wise. And perhaps the bird is so. Certainly eighty days incubating, shared with its mate, gives an albatross much time for meditation. Elsewhere we saw more albatross nests scattered across the island. One bird circled past us again and again, and finally settled in a heavy but surprisingly graceful landing. And at a hill crest, several birds faced one another, wings wide in nuptial ecstasy.
Today we were encountered some of the most exceptional wildlife spectacles on the planet. The experience was unforgettable.
