Dermot Breen's Blog: Kidney Island, Falklands, 24th December 2019

Monday, 24 February 2020

Kidney Island, Falklands, 24th December 2019

I decided to divide our Falkland Island day trip into two parts. We sailed into the islands early on Christmas Eve. It didn't particularly feel very like Christmas on the ship. We were transported from the cruise ship into the harbour at Stanley by small tender boats. We managed to get onto one the first boats. There didn't seem to be a particular rush of people trying to get off the boat. I'm sure there are probably quite a few passengers who don't even leave the ship for shore days at all.

We met up with our guide for day - Andy Pollard https://falklandsnature.com/
Andy had organised a small boat to bring us from Stanley out to Kidney Island which is still covered in the native Tussac grass and is home to at least one Falkland endemic species - Cobb's Wren. The Falkland race of Blackish Cinclodes is also found here and is split by a few authorities but not by the International Ornithological Committee whom I follow. We also happened to see Falkland Steamer Duck here although not necessarily restricted to uninhabited offshore islands. We decided to give Volunteer Point a miss. This is a very popular destination on the main island as it has a large King Penguin colony but not a whole lot else though. We lucked out in seeing a single King Penguin hauled up on the beach on the main island when we arrived on Kidney Island. We had already seen Magellanic and Gentoo Penguins as we arrived into the Falklands from the Coral Princess. Southern Rockhopper Penguin was another target on Kidney which made for a four Penguin species day.

The tussac grass was taller than us with no established trails through it. There were Sooty Shearwater burrows everywhere which were to be avoided. Anyone no more than a few metres from you would completely disappear from view. Another interesting feature of the tussac grass were the numerous South American Fur Seals who were hauled up hidden amongst the grass quite often high above the shoreline on the steep slopes. It was very easy to spook animals above you on the slope. The next thing you would hear would be one hauling ass coming down the slope towards you. There were one or two very near misses due to the tall grass.
The weather was about as good as you can expect on the Falklands. We were all a bit over dressed. It was great to see how tame most of the wildlife was here.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S62596307