Sea Lion Island - now with photos!

Yesterday was another good day. I had my day off and I was off to a little island to the south of the main islands called Sea Lion Island. I'm sure you can guess what it's famous for. The family that live on the island take weather readings for us and they'd had some problems with their barometer being out of calibration so I was asked to pop in and have a look at it. No worries. So we went over in the helicopter which is the first time I can remember being in a helicopter to tell you the truth. The Island is fairly small, 5 miles by 1, and has populations of sea lions, elephant seals, penguins (at least three types), birds of prey and other birds.

I made sure that I sorted out the barometer first, it being the most important part of the trip really, then I had a wander around.

From the lodge down to the beach I passed Falklands geese

and some penguins,

(looks to me like he's going "I thank you!")

then along the beach there were more birds

and a seal of some kind playing in the surf.

Walking along I met up with some of the other guys from the heli and they pointed me towards an Elephant seal and his mate, and bugger me those things are big!

The big males (we found 2 of them) are huge, grey and mostly covered in sand, the females are covered in a soft looking brown pelt but I wasn't about to get close enough to see how it felt. Not just cause there's a minimum approach distance, or just because it they're big and strong, and not just because they do smell somewhat of fish. More a combination of these. And she looked like she didn't want to be bothered so I figured it would be better to let her be.

There were also many Turkey Vultures

and Caracaras,

as well as some smaller birds.

Some bits made me laugh, one of the guys had his family along and when they stopped a couple of birds swooped to sit near by, obviously hoping for someone to die.

Cue Ice Age quote "unattended children will be eaten!"

On the way back I sat near the penguins and after a couple of minutes they all started to come closer and closer.

Gave me some pretty good photos, although I took almost 400 shots so I should have had a couple of good 'uns.I'm going to have to go back, there's a lot of the Island left to see, and I'd recommend it to anyone that's down this neck of the woods!