Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands

Yellow-eyed Penguin

Lovely Forest

Auckland Island Flightless Teal

Northern Giant Petrel

So colorful. A little bit beyond this spot I blew the opportunity to take a close-up photo of a nesting Southern Royal Albatross right next to the boardwalk. Minimizing disturbance as requested and luckily I had more opportunities to photograph nesting Royals at Campbell Island, but such a beautiful scene here with the vegetation. Imagine.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross coming in for a landing near its nest on the North Shore cliffs of Enderby.

Wow, what a place! Enderby Island is one of the true gems of this trip. One of our guides said this is his favorite stop on the tour. We were greeted by New Zealand Fur Seals and the quite rare Hooker’s (or New Zealand) Sea Lion as we landed. Both species are in the family Otariidae, named for their external ear pinnae. They are further identified by their ability to rotate all four legs under them to enable them to walk/gallop, unlike true seals such as elephant seals, which blubber along by undulating their bodies. We switched out of gum boots and into hiking boots for our “4-mile” hike around the western part of the island. (8+ miles on the Fitbit pedometer I always wear).

The vegetation on Enderby rivals the birdlife, making everywhere you look, all the time, interesting and beautiful (except when struggling a bit through occasional stretches of tussock mounds, an unstable surface that forced me to look down at my feet). I hadn’t heard the term megaherbs before this trip. Giant parsley? Kind of, actually!  The flowers, leaves, and area covered were all mega.

When the expedition leader, Rodney Russ, drew one of his detailed maps on the whiteboard for our pre-landing briefing, he indicated where we would see each key species: Yellow-eyed Penguin, Southern Royal Albatross, Light-mantled Sooty Albatross, Auckland Island Shag, Auckland Island Flightless Teal, Subantarctic Snipe, etc. I was impressed but not surprised by his confidence that we’d get good looks at each of those nesting species. But when he put New Zealand Falcon on the map in two locations, with a fairly high degree of confidence we’d see them, I was skeptical. You can imagine how happily surprised I was when, while walking by the 2^nd location on his map, I watched a falcon fly towards me, hover above, then fly off into the mist. Another life bird. NBD. 

Megaherbs! We were lucky to be there when most plants were in flower.

Auckland Island Pipit - I love these little guys! They were always nearby and fearless.

Auckland Island Banded Dotterel

Again following directions to move off and not scare the bird anymore once I saw it so here's my awesome picture of....you guessed it, the Subantarctic Snipe. (Lower right, that's its striped back and tail ducking behind the tall brown stems). The good news (in addition to seeing it) is that they are getting more common now that predators have been removed from the island, as is true of all the places we visited. It only took a short walk through the knee-high vegetation to flush it (and I really didn't want to disturb it any more than we already had).

It's harvest time for the Auckland Island Shag.

This looks like a nice load - time to jump off the cliff with it....

...and pile on the vegetation to keep eggs/chicks warm and dry.

I'm glad it wasn't raining (much) because the blond fur of the female Hooker's Sea Lions was glistening.

A male and his harem. I saw a pup shortly after birth and a few getting close to being trampled by males as they roared towards other males infringing on their territory. One pup carcass indicated someone didn't make it but they seemed pretty adept at getting to a safe spot in the nick of time.

Solo around-the-world Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm was disqualified from the race because he used our ship as a mooring at Enderby Island when his anchor dragged while he was repairing his hydro generators. The final decision report is disappointing because he was nearly halfway finished and DSQ on two technicalities that didn't affect his position or ability to complete the race. He kept going while the appeal was lodged and eventually had to take on fuel just beyond Cape Horn when he officially retired but still kept sailing towards the finish line (also the starting point) at Les Sables d'Olonne, France. As I write this, the leaders have just passed the equator in the Atlantic, 3000nm to go, and 68 days into the race. I can only imagine the determination, endurance, intelligence, and skill these skippers possess to be able compete in this race.