Mid-winter

Today is the shortest day of the year here. On Friday we had blizzards all day and everywhere is still white with probably about 6 inches of snow on average in the garden. The main road into town is now reasonably clear although there are odd icy patches but our road is like an ice rink.


Saturday dawned quite bright and not too windy and we headed down to Surf Bay to register for the mid-winter swim. Because the main MPA road was closed to military vehicles because of the snow there were a lot less people participating than last year.


We had time to walk along the beach and back before it was time to strip off, run down the beach and plunge into the sea. There were some big waves this year and being knocked over by one helped me to get the required head under the water! It was very exhilarating but I wouldn't have wanted to stay in for long.


The air temperature was 1 degree C but the water is probably a couple of degrees warmer. The worst thing was standing in snow on the beach with bare feet whilst undressing and dressing.
I didn't manage to give our camera to a non-swimmer this year so no pictures to prove that I was actually in the South Atlantic in mid-winter in a bikini!


On the way home I took this photo of the Lady Liz and the view up the harbour to Mount William and Tumbledown.


Yesterday afternoon we went back to Surf Bay with the sledge and had great fun sledging down the snow covered dunes. As the sea has eroded the sand at the top of the beach there is a small drop off before you land on the beach amongst the kelp.

June ramble

Last Sunday we went out with the ramblers. We drove out towards MPA and left our car near the main road. We then got into other people's cars and drove up a track into the hills. We then walked up onto a ridge with some rocky outcrops along the top and views down to the coast. It was quite wet underfoot and a cold wind when we started but the wind eased and the sun came out in the afternoon so it was very pleasant.


From the ridge we dropped down into the Van Tan valley. On the way down I spotted this unusual fungus.
The Van Tan river flows through a pretty valley with steep rocks beside it in places. There are actually very few rivers and streams here so it was particularly nice walking along beside it.


Further downstream Simon and Ross crossed over the river to cut back to where we had left our car.
I thought they might be going to get wet but they got across safely!


The rest of us continued down the river to the main road and then Simon picked up the other drivers and took them to collect their cars while we relaxed in the sunshine. Unfortunately we will miss the July and August rambles as we will be away on leave.

Since last weekend the weather has turned very wintry. I cycled to work in a blizzard yesterday lunchtime. When I came home it was very icy and my bike gears had frozen up so I was stuck in a low gear. I think I must have looked like a cartoon pedalling frantically along on the icy road!

We had more snow this morning but the sun is shining at the moment and it is thawing. However the forecast is for heavy snow tonight with gale force southerly (bitter) winds so going on an early shift tomorrow may not be fun. Anyway I must get ready for work now.

Walking through a minefield

Last Friday I had the unusual experience of walking across what was until recently a minefield. This was part of a public confidence demonstration to celebrate the completion of the demining of the Surf Bay minefield.

As Britain signed up to the Ottowa convention on the clearing of mines in their territories they have committed themselves to clearing the minefields in the Falkland Islands (although they were laid by the Argentinians). As a pilot 2 areas have been cleared this year, one at Sapper Hill and the other at Surf Bay plus small areas at Goose Green and Fox Bay which were fenced off because of the possibility of unexploded ordinance.


A team of 37 deminers from Zimbabwe arrived in October and we got to know some of them well as they came to our church. They were joined for a while by a smaller group from Lebanon.


I think the job proved a lot harder and took a lot longer than expected, particularly at Surf Bay.
They had plans drawn by the Argentine engineers who laid the mines and these proved to be very accurate. (They had been expecting to be removing them themselves when they won the conflict!) The mines were laid in rows within blocks or panels and at Surf Bay there were alternate anti-personel and anti-vehicle mines within the rows.


Searching for the mines is a very painstaking operation. Each mine has only 2 very small pieces of metal on it and so are not easy to detect with metal detectors. From the perimeter fence the deminers clear a number of paths into the minefield until they reach the first row of mines. They then start clearing along the row. The paths are marked out with string and coloured posts and different coloured markers put where each mine was found. Unfortunately I can't find the photos that I took of the area during clearance.

The surface vegetation is carefully removed. The dense fern and diddle dee plants, particularly at Sapper Hill proved very challenging. Then the soil is gradually removed with a trowel. When a layer has been removed they then check again with the metal detectors.

When a mine is discovered it is partially exposed and marked. At the end of work on alternate days the exposed mines are detonated, sending huge couds of peat, sand and stones high into the air. At Sapper Hill many of the mines were very close to the surface and entangled in the roots of the vegetation. At Surf Bay most were between 20 and 30 cms deep but the panels nearest the beach had been covered by sand dunes since they were laid.


To find these they used a mechanical digger which had a protecting metal grid over the front window of the cab. A Falkland Islander was trained to do the mechanical demining. The deepest mine was under about 6 metres of sand so finding the last mines took a long time and involved moving vast quantities of sand.


The minefield at Surf Bay contained over 1,000 mines, and I was amazed how close together they were. You certainly would not have been able to walk through there without standing on one! Despite having been laid 28 years ago the mines were still all in perfect working order.

At the public confidence demonstration one of the people supervising the project gave a short talk and then the few deminers still on the island walked across the area.


The governor was then invited to walk across before the general public were allowed to. The minefield signs have been removed but the fences are going to be left to allow the areas to regenerate. There are still 113 minefields remaining in the Falkland Islands, varying from quite small areas to huge tracts of land. The area at Surf Bay was one of the densest mined areas and also particularly challenging with the varied terrain.

News - contract extension

Things are now a little clearer. Simon was told by his boss a few days ago that he would like to extend his contract by a year (probably because he has not yet re-organised the department as he is planning to). Nothing is signed or sealed yet but it is good to have a bit more idea what we will be doing. We have therefore provisionally booked to go on leave on July 6th, spending a week on Ascension Island and then about 4 weeks in UK. This is a much nicer prospect than having to pack everything up here! We are only waitlisted on the flights so won't know until much nearer the time if we are definitely flying then.

So, what else has been happening? At the moment I only have a couple of shifts each week at work, but that can quickly change! I have been tidying up the garden and also doing a bit of gardening for our neighbour in exchange for Spanish lessons. I can now say "it is a nice day isn't it" and "please give me the blue pencil". We have had some cold spells but also some lovely warm sunny days. The flower bed I planted to screen the vegetable bed is still looking very pretty and the tree lupins in it are growing quite big.


On a sunny morning about a week ago I went for a walk from Gypsy Cove around Tussac Point and Engineers Point. The penguins have all gone from Gypsy Cove (although I did recently see a stray one swimming in the harbour). I saw this pair of Falkland Flightless Steamer ducks (also known as logger ducks) in Hadrassa Bay. There are a lot of them around but it is usually hard to get very close to them. The male has the more orange beak and paler head. They can not fly but 'steam' along the surface of the water flapping their wings and paddling their feet. They can be very pugnacious and territorial.


This is a pair of kelp geese. The male is the white one. They are usually on the shore line feeding amongst the kelp.


When I first spotted this on the shore I thought it was a skeleton of some sort but on closer examination it turned out to be a tree skeleton!

Visitor

Last Friday we had a visitor in our garden. In fact I have seen a few of them around the area over the past few weeks. A group of these cattle egrets arrive most autumns but they do not usually survive the winter here.


He (or she) was very busy pecking around on the front lawn and seemed to be catching lots of earwigs and woodlice. As the earwigs have reached plague proportions both inside and outside the house I would have liked to be able to tame him and keep him but they are very shy.


This seemed an even more appealing idea when I woke up in the middle of last night feeling something wriggling around in my ear - is this why they are called earwigs?

The egret was in the garden again today but looking rather bedraggled and sorry for itself as we had gale force winds. It did not seem to be eating anything and I suspect will not live much longer.

Work and weather

Again apologies for such a long abscence of blogs. I had good intentions about 3 weeks ago and was looking for some photos I wanted to post. That led to me starting to edit, sort and file large numbers of photos on the computer which has been a very slow ongoing process.

Then I have been working LOTS (50 hours this last week including the past 2 nights). Hopefully I now have 2 days off, for which I am grateful, especially as we have an opthalmic surgeon visiting this week. He had 17 people booked in for cataract operations today so the ward was going to be very busy.

When I came off duty this morning I went for a swim and did a bit of shopping before going to bed for a couple of hours. The afternoon was beautifully sunny with a strong wind so I decided to get out in the garden and cut the grass for a final time. This would not have been remarkable except that 4 days ago it looked like this!

We had several sharp frosts last week and some snow showers on Wednesday which melted then we woke on Thursday to a very wintry scene.

Amazingly my sugarsnap peas seem to be unaffected and I am still picking lots. We are self sufficient for vegetables at the moment with lots of different greens, carrots, swedes, potatoes and onions. Unfortunately the beetroot were very unsuccessful and the parsnips tiny but you can't win them all.

Last Wednesday was a public holiday for the Queen's birthday (very patriotic here!) and I happened to have the day off. There was a parade with a military band, a 21 gun salute and open house with free drinks at the governors. However we didn't go but we did have a nice walk up part of the south coast of Cape Pembroke. We managed to time it between snow showers and although there was a bitingly cold wind the sun shone.

There were some very impressive waves breaking on the rocks.

Kidney Island and Cobb's wrens

Yesterday afternoon I went on a visit to Kidney Island. This is a small island off the east coast of East Falkland and takes about 30 minutes to reach by motor launch from Stanley. Access is usually restricted but as part of the Cobb's wren conservation programme visits have been arranged on 2 days a year. Simon went on one while I was in UK before Christmas and I was fortunate to get a place on one yesterday.

The island has rocky shores and is covered in dense tussac grass. We were taken ashore from the launch in an inflatable dinghy and there were 4 sea lions playing in the water near the beach.
We were guided by Sally Poncet who manages the Cobb's wren conservation programme. We scrambled up through the tussac and it was very wet underfoot in many places. Under the tussac plants are numerous burrows where sooty shearwaters nest. Thousands of them return to the burrows when it gets dark but are all away feeding during the day. When we were with the ramblers at Rincon Grande the previous weekend we watched a big flock of them fishing while we ate our lunch.
In the middle of the island we passed a sea lion amongst the tussac. It is surprising how far inland they travel.
Then we scrambled down to another pebbly beach where there were quite a lot of sea lions and sat and watched them. There were also lots of tussac birds and Cobb's wrens feeding amongst the kelp and rocks. They are both quite tame and will come quite close if you sit still. The wrens were constantly popping down between the pebbles so were hard to catch on photos.
In the breeding season the adults are dark chestnut brown on their backs but by this time of year have faded considerably.
Cobb's wrens are only found on those offshore islands in the Falklands that are free from cats, rats and mice. They nest in tussac or in crevices in the rocks. There are thought to be about 6,000 breeding pairs.
The conservation project is undertaking surveys and attempting to eradicate rats from a number of other islands with suitable habitat in the hope that they will become colonised.
While I was sitting watching the wrens another sea lion came down from the tussac quite close to us.
We saw several dolphins on our way out and as we came back to the jetty in Stanley 3 were playing just next to the launch. You could almost have reached over the side and touched them. Unfortunately I had put my camera away by then.