We were almost an hour late meeting our guide at Mount Pleasant Airport as it took ages to get our bags and queue to get through immigration and customs. There’s one flight a week from Punto Arenas here each Saturday plus an airforce place from the UK via Ascension Island.
Our Guide was Tony Smith from Discovery Falklands who was really knowledgeable about the Island and its birds and wildlife. He certainly knew where to go for the birds and wide notifying them.
With only an hour of birding time, we dashed to Port Stanley, to try for some birds at Gypsy Cove and along the coast. We were lucky as we saw most of the birds that would have been new for us that you get on the Falklands.
Falkland Island Steamer Duck is an endemic but was very common. The islands were pretty barren and large areas were still covered in unexploded land mines.
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Magellanic Penguin burrow
Photograph taken by and copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
Falkland Island Steamer Duck is an endemic but was very common. The islands were pretty barren and large areas were still covered in unexploded land mines.
After our birding, we had a little tour of Port Stanley including the places that were memorable from the Falklands conflict with Argentina.
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| Tony Smith of Discovery Falklands, Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig and Chris Craig
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig boarding The Vavilov Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig |
There were birds we still wanted to see, but hoped to catch up with tomorrow at Sea Lion Island, a Falklands off Island to the south west.
The best birds from Mainland Falkland:
Falklands Steamer-Duck
Crested Duck
Upland Goose
Kelp Goose
Ruddy-headed Goose
Crested Duck
Black-crowned Night Heron
Megellanic Penguin
Falklands Thrush (a subspecies of Austral Thrush)
Dark-faced Ground-Tyrant
Black-browed Albatross
Megellanic Cormorant
Megellanic Oyestercatcher
Two-banded Plover
Baird's Sandpiper
White-rumped Sandpiper
Dolphin Gull
Kelp Gull
White-bridled Finch
About the Writer
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in a week (arriving on 22 December 2015), which will be her 7th continent.
Mya-Rose is a Bristol European Green Capital 2015 Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol 2015 Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter
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