Dec. 11 - Afternoon circumnavigation of Tucker Islet

After a hearty lunch on board the Stella Australis, we once again donned our "rainproof" gear for a circumnavigation in the zodiac of Tucker Islet. This small islet is 30 nautical miles from our morning excursion in Ainsworth Bay. (I really sound like an experienced mariner, don't I?!) The reported 'circumnavigation' of Tucker Islet took about an hour, but it sounds quite impressive, doesn't it?! And now for the very cool bit of info - one 'nautical mile' is equal to one degree of latitude. This translates into one nm equalling 6026 feet, whereas one land mile is 5280 feet.  Ergo, 1 nm = 1.15 mi. There will be a quiz later.
So, back to Tucker Islet. We all boarded the zodiacs as we had been taught to, but somehow, Ivan and I got into the zodiac of a different group. Our group was the 'Drake' group and we had all bonded and developed a strong sense of unity and purpose, although exactly what that purpose was remains uncertain. We were on the zodiac with people we had not seen before. This became important later because the guide was unknown to us and something not good happened while we were in that zodiac. More on that later.
We zipped over to a rocky island, with low elevation at one end and high (~75') granite-like cliffs with dozens of Rock Cormorants on them. Most of the cormorants were on nests which probably had either eggs or young in them. Ivan, in spite of the bobbing up and down of the zodiac, managed this very nice photo:

Rock Cormorant with chick

Note the lovely face of this bird with the red pattern and white spot. Note, too, that the black on the bird's chest stops mid-way up the chest area. This gave instantaneous differentiation between these birds and the Imperial, or King, Cormorant which we also saw and which are pictured a bit below. Both parents of this species tend to the young, so there was a lot of coming and going of adult cormorants. Unlike the Imperial Cormorants, these birds make their nests, as their name would imply, on rock ledges on these islands. They also seemed to be quite peaceable with each other - again unlike the Imperial.

After watching these birds for awhile, the driver of our boat suddenly opened the throttle and zoomed away from the island, in a direction 180° from where he should have been going. I looked at him and he was grinning and laughing at something. I looked to the bow of the zodiac and there, in the water was a large bird frantically trying to swim away from the boat. We were almost on top of the bird when the driver turned us back to our proper course and I saw that the bird he had been chasing was a Flightless Steamer-Duck! That bird is incapable of flying and he had been mercilessly chasing it - something he thought was funny. To say I was outraged would be an understatement. I gave a dirty look to the guide, who merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Once back on board the Stella, I went directly to the Officer of the Day and read him the riot act. Unfortunately I didn't know the name of either the zodiac driver or the guide in the boat. The Officer was horrified, and said that, since all crew had been instructed to respect the wildlife, and since I didn't know any names, all crew would be sternly reminded that this type of harassment of wildlife is unacceptable. I made sure I was never in the offending driver's zodiac ever again. I was pleased that the Officer agreed with me and that something would be done.

So, back to the visit to the other side of Tucker Islet. This was the side with lower elevation and had lots of grassy vegetation and soil in which Magellanic Penguins were nesting. I've already included some photos of this small penguin and, since we were at the mercy of the waves, photographing these penguins was quite difficult. We did, however, see and photograph the Imperial Penguin at their nest colony. Here are two taken in succession:

Note the cormorant on the left in front on the rocks.
It has a bunch of grasses in its bill and is attempting to take the grass to its nest.
As it neared the other cormorants, they would jab at it and try to take its grasses.
A Chilean Skua got involved and the poor cormorant dropped its bill-load in fright.

These are Imperial, or King, Cormorants.
Remember the black and white pattern of the Rock Cormorant?
This one has white all the way up to its beak.

Another difference between these two species is that the Imperial Cormorant nests are situated very close to each other. There is limited nesting material readily available, so fighting and stealing materials from each other are common. These birds were also not as far along in their nesting as the Rock Cormorants were.

With the exception of the unfortunate incident with the Steamer-Duck, this excursion was extremely interesting.