Sie whale on Carcass Island

Not sure what happened just now when I went to start this and a blank blog suddenly published itself!
A couple of weeks ago the body of an enormous sei whale was washed up on Carcass Island on a beach near the North West Point (fortunately well away from the settlement).
When it was found by the island's owner there were hundreds of giant petrels around it. They had gorged so much on the whale that they were too heavy to take off.
The whale was estimated to be between 56 and 58 feet long. It was lying with its head towards the sea and there were no obvious injury marks. Sei are the most common whales in these waters but are very shy.

Mount Harriet

On Sunday afternoon we took a short drive out of Stanley on the Mount Pleasant road and then walked up Mount Harriet. At 442 metres it is really only a hill, but that is its name, and it was an easy walk up to the ridge. The weather had been quite unsettled all day. We stopped to pick and eat a few tea berries on the way. These are small, sweet pink berries which grow at ground level on small shrubby plants.These are diddle dee berries which are edible but much more bitter. You can make jam and jelly from them but they are tiny to pick (much smaller than a pea). The upland geese feed on them in the winter and I am not sure why they had not tackled this particularly heavy fruiting plant.
Near the ridge is a cross commemorating 2 British soldiers who lost their lives there during the conflict. The peak was taken by the 42 Commando Royal Marines on 11th - 12th June 1982. They had been doing night reconnaisance for the previous 10 nights through the mine fields, and so managed to approach from behind within 150 metres at 2 am before they were spotted. Ultimately 2 of them were killed and 26 injured, whilst the Argentinians suffered 50 deaths and 300 captured.
All along the ridge are large rock slabs and pinnacles and piles of boulders. There is still some debris like batteries and radio wires lying around. We scrambled up some of the rocks but did not make it to the highest point as by that time a gale was blowing and a blizzard had arrived. The summit cairn is atop some particularly exposed and slightly overhanging rocks. At times it was almost impossible to stand up.
By the time I had realised my photographic errors it was getting rather dusky so some of the pictures are not too clear.
This is a view over Port Harriet (the inlet of the sea). You can just see the abbatoir and the wind farm with 3 turbines.

camera problems

Well actually the problems are with the operator not the camera! Firstly I thought I had moved some photos from one file on the computer to another but sadly I seem to have managed to cut them but not paste them and they have disappeared. Then when we went to Port Louis with the ramblers the Sunday before last I forgot to charge the battery so found the camera was dead when we got there, so no pictures. This Sunday afternoon we went for a walk up Mount Harriet and I was happily snapping away but thought something was not as usual. I tried to ask Simon about it but it was so windy that he couldn't hear me. It was only towards the end of our walk I found the camera was set to video and we had some very strange footage! I did manage to get a few photos before we came down though.

I have been very busy at work as the ward is quite short staffed at the moment. I did nearly 40 hours last week and have 4 shifts this week - hence little time for blogging or correspondence.
Simon enjoyed several hours windsurfing on Saturday, made more fun by the fact that our neighbour was out in his dinghy so he had someone to race around. It was a relatively mild and sunny day and I might have been tempted to go too but was waiting for a farmer to deliver 2 lambs, some diced and minced beef and some beef joints to go in the freezer. We had a shoulder of lamb for dinner last night and it was delicious. Unfortunately the freezer which we bought second hand a few weeks ago and which has been running very cold now seems to be struggling to freeze the meat.

After coming in from windsurfing Simon helped me finish putting up a fence to enclose my extended vegetable plot which I am gradually digging. I still need to make a gate and I suspect a second rockery is going to be required soon.

Just to prove to myself, if not to anyone else,that I can do this photo thing here are a couple of pictures of the sky yesterday evening, taken from just outside our front door.

The Falklands have some stunning sunrises and sunsets but we don't see much of them from our house.

Winter on its way

After a nice sunny start today has turned cold wet and windy. The weekend was very calm - much to Simon's disappointment as he had hoped to get out windsurfing. He did however service our bicycles.
Saturday afternoon we went out to Gypsy Cove and had a walk. It is strange being there with no penguins about. Having bred and moulted the magellanics have now all gone back to sea until next spring. We noticed a large flock of birds on the sea in Port William. They were mostly kelp gulls and rock shags but we did spot 2 penguins at the front of the group. The penguins and shags kept diving and the whole group were very active and moving along quite quickly. We presumed there must be a shoal of fish swimming along that they were feeding on.
Last Tuesday we had some hail storms and snow showers so it really felt winter was on its way, although we have had some sunny days since.
I have just looked out of the window and seen a gull flying backwards at some speed, presumably unable to cope with the wind up there!
The upland geese continue to regularly graze the lawns and 2 cattle egrets sometimes come in the garden but are extremely shy.
The previous weekend we went for a walk from Surf Bay. The easterly gales we had a few weeks ago washed away large ammounts of sand from the beach and the bottom of the dunes at the end of the beach, exposing previously hidden rocks. Huge piles of kelp were deposited on the remaining sand. Unfortunately I seem to have lost all the pictures I took of this.
Heading up towards Cape Pembroke we passed some small cliffs where lots of rock shags nest and perch.As it was fairly windy the waves were breaking and sending spray high into the air. We found some pieces of aircraft wreckage amongst the rocks, presumably from the conflict.