Bones, Penguins, Zorro and a Mouse

Day 2 of the pre-expedition birding trip began not exactly after dawn (sunrise was at 4:57am this morning, sunset 10:13pm tonight) but early enough at 6am. While rushing through my breakfast I noticed two Crested Caracaras on the roof right next to me. They are hunters and scavengers and we played a game of cat and mouse after the owner of the hotel put out some meat on the window ledge.







I pretended to look intently at my cereal as I ate while sneaking a peek to see if my feigned inattentiveness would lure him into super close range, but then I got distracted by a fox running down the neighbor's driveway. I stepped to the corner of the second floor window and snapped photos of two Zorro Gris (Gray Foxes) looking at each other across the street. I'm sure the Caracara grabbed the meat while I was paying attention to the foxes.

Today was quite a special day - our first penguins of the trip! Magellanic Penguins and Gentoo Penguins (with the red bill, running to the right, above) are common breeders on Martillo Island.

King Penguins are out of their normal range here but one was on the island (the largest penguin in the picture with all 3 species of penguin and the 2nd largest in the world, bested only by the Emperor Penguin). A special treat. We'll see hundreds of thousands of King Penguins on South Georgia Island, but it's nice to have a picture of the very first King Penguin I've ever seen. The penguins and Chilean Skua (spreading its wings) are habituated to the stream of mainly quiet (shutters snapping!) tourists. 

One of the Magellanics even walked along behind me in the path after visiting several neighboring burrows. The chicks are mainly large and fluffy, as seen with the two peering through the grasses.


Braying took place quite often - placing the Magellanic Penguins in the group known broadly as jackass penguins because they sound like a donkey.






At the take-off point for our zodiac trip to the island we visited the Museo Acatushun de Aves y Mamiferos Marinos Australes. An intern (students - you too can work here for free - beautiful setting, smelly work!) told us about his job so far - walking beaches to find dead animals, bringing the carcasses back to the museum, storing them in barrels until the flesh rots off, and doing the final scraping and cleaning in the bone building before bleaching the bones to remove remaining oils, then reconstructing the skeleton for storage and display. It's really an amazing resource with all the bones they have of common, and not-so-common, species. The box of skulls is primarily of Commerson's Dolphin skulls waiting for the skin to fall off. They are numerous because they get caught in fishing nets and drown, then wash up.

The bleached set of two skulls shows the final display quality - dorsal and ventral views. Notice the tiny teeth, all the same peg-like structure (homodont dentition, handy for eating fish - grip and swallow).

The big whale skeletons on the lawn are juvenile Sei Whales (baleen whales - no teeth).

One of the neat features of this museum was the articulated skeletons on the wall in front of a life-size painting of the species. The Southern Right Whale Dolphin (could a name be more confusing? There is such a thing as a Southern Right Whale and it looks nothing like this because it's an enormous baleen whale - we have an etching of a Right Whale or a Bowhead on the main floor of Swindells Hall). I liked the King Penguin skeleton too.

















On the penguin island, we saw several skins of Magellanic Penguins turned inside out. A Leopard Seal had come to shore not long ago and ate a lot of penguins. I included a Leopard Seal skull above so you can see the odd shape of its teeth - three cusps. BIG canines - heterodont dentition but still a little blend of dolphin-like teeth with pre-molars and molars being quite similar and pointy. Grab, thrash, peel and swallow...



Another fascinating display is the bone abnormalities. On the left is the femur of a guanaco (a camel/llama-like fluffy animal - I hope to see one in the wild tomorrow) - it probably broke its leg but the fracture became infected and the bone kept trying to heal - look how much bone deposited in the middle! It looks like a plaster of Paris project gone bad. The middle three bones show healed fractured ribs. And the right two vertebral columns show two animals with a congenital defect - probably mom and calf or sibling dolphins - the fusion of the spines (6th from left) is identical on both animals. Weird stuff.


And finally, a few fun pics from sights en route to the penguin island. We stopped for a flock of Austral Parakeets and found a family of Austral Pygmy-Owls! Watched them for a long time - so entertaining especially as other species came in to see what all the fuss is about. I haven't identified the mouse yet but it sure was hilarious watching all of us trying to get pics of it with our enormous lenses and the mouse literally running right up to our feet! He was a fast one.


The fungus is Darwin's fungus - gets into the Beech trees (Nothofagus spp.) and they make a gall to boot it out. The little balls of fungus drop from the trees and litter the forest floor.



And the last species is an Upland Goose - one of the prettiest species of goose I've seen, except for possibly the Bar-headed Goose on Hovsgol Lake in Mongolia - they were pretty special! Tomorrow we're going to a sheep farm.