Having woken early last Saturday I went for a walk before breakfast and saw lots of interesting birds along the beach near the settlement including tiny Cobb's wrens which are endemic to the Falklands but only live on islands which are free of cats, rats and mice. They nest under rocks on the beach. I also saw 2 oyster catchers on their nests at the top of the beach. Their dark green speckled eggs are very hard to spot in their nest of stones. There were also lots of tussac birds, rather like very small blackbirds, but remarkably inquisitive and tame, coming right up to your feet, and I watched one building a nest under a pile of fence stakes near the house.
After breakfast Rob drove us up towards the north end of the island near the airstrip and dropped us off. We set off to explore the North - West Point and as soon as we reached the beach were surprised to see a huge bull sea elephant or elephant seal just in front of us. Despite having read about them I was still amazed at the size of it and we were standing only a few feet from it. The mature males grow to more than 5 metres long and weigh 4 tons. They have an extraordinary nose almost like a short elephants trunk and can open and close their nostrils. Most of the time he just lay dozing but occasionally sat up and opened his mouth wide revealing some large teeth. They seem very ungainly on land when dragging themselves along but are very agile in the sea.
As we walked around the point we saw lots of them, many in groups of a mature male with his harem of females and pups, but also some groups of immature males. Most of the adults have scars on their brown coats where they have been fighting. The new born pups are black and are only suckled for about 3 weeks in which time they quadruple their weight. The females then mate and return to the sea. The pups moult and get a thick coat that is silvery grey on their undersides and dark grey on top - very thick and soft to touch.
The seals feed on penguins and fish and squid for which they are able to dive to incredible depths, staying underwater for long periods (one book says depths of up to 1500m & 90 minutes).
We also saw a few Southern sea lions but these were much shier and ran into the tussac grass or the sea, although interestingly a female and 4 large pups we had seen near home a couple of weeks ago had been very unconcerned at our presence.
There are also some fresh water ponds where we saw a variety of geese, ducks, grebes and waders and watched Magelanic penguins having a bath.
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