Nothing prepares you for your first iceberg. These behemoths loom on the horizon, standing like gates to another realm.
that hails from the Arctic – a nice example of convergent evolution.
Also trailing the ship were numerous black-browed albatrosses, which I soon came to accept as the default albatross of the trip. They were impressive creatures, resembling huge, thin-winged great black-backed gulls, but even they were dwarfed by the wandering and southern royal albatrosses that I would later encounter while crossing the notorious Drake Passage.
Named after Sir Francis, this treacherous patch of sea spans the 800km between Cape Horn and the South Shetlands, a raggedy collection of islands just north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Crossings can be horribly rough, with swells of up to 13m bringing vast quantities of water smashing across the ship’s bow. The choppiness is due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which flows eastwards
Ice on land flows towards the ocean as glaciers and ice sheets. If the ice reaches the sea, it often continues to extend as floating ice shelves or ‘ice tongues’. Pieces of ice naturally break off and float away – these are icebergs. When icebergs break off, the process is known as calving.
DO ICEBERGS FLOAT?
All icebergs float initially. However, they may become grounded when they enter waters that are too shallow, and they become stuck on the sea floor. They could remain grounded for months or even years until they melt enough to continue drifting.
WHY DO THEY APPEAR BLUE, GREEN OR STRIPEY? Icebergs appear blue because ice absorbs more longer wavelength light (yellow/red colour) than shorter wavelength blue
around the continent, creating a waterflow about 600 times more powerful than that of the Amazon River.
If you can stomach the bouncing and lolling, the Drake Passage is a brilliant place to observe seabirds in sometimes startling numbers, particularly towards the convergence with the much colder Antarctic waters. Having survived my first night at sea, I peered through my porthole in the early morning to be greeted by countless shearwaters and petrels, including the tiny Wilson’s storm petrel, skimming the surface of the water. The cluttered mass of beaks and feathers was briefly interrupted by an enormous wandering albatross, which swung lazily in and out of view. I threw on my clothes and sprinted – as best as I could – along the rocking corridors, up to the deck. When I got there, looking down into the churning waves, I saw a pod of at least 25 humpback whales, including a female flanked by her calf. Humpbacks, along with other cetaceans, seals and seabirds, gather in these waters to feast on the vast numbers of phytoplankton and associated copepods and krill, the building blocks of the Antarctic food-chain. It was utterly spectacular.
The birds continued to impress. Flocks of beautiful piebald cape petrels swirled behind the ship, along with a couple of dark whitechinned petrels (something of a misnomer, as the white markings on their ‘chins’ are the size of pinheads) and southern giant petrels – the vultures of the open sea. Though arguably not the most beautiful, these formidable birds are incredibly graceful in the air; swilling around with great charisma as they inspect the water – and, indeed, any bystanders watching from the deck – for food items.
Into the deep freeze
Nothing prepares you for your first iceberg. Initially, these behemoths loom on the horizon, standing like unearthly gates to another realm. As the hours pass and you draw closer, you start to get an overwhelming sense of their enormity. When you finally drift past, you stare upwards then downwards, pondering the depths to which the submerged ice might reach. The colours are incomprehensible, too – a spectrum of dazzling white to brilliant blue. The bluer the berg, I learned, the older it is.
One ice-tower was circuited repeatedly at its peak by a flock of snow petrels, fluttering like little white angels inspecting a stark white plinth. Further along, hauled out on the flat of a low-lying floe, were about 130 crabeater seals, variously loafing and baring their teeth
Charging from cabin to deck to spy a sei whale, my bottom half was clad only in long Johns.
at each other. Though this is an abundant Antarctic species – some 15 million are spread over the pack-ice zones – the crew had never observed such a large gathering in one place. Complementing this unusual encounter was another first for the whole ship – the sight of a forlorn and rather confused-looking emperor penguin, who should have been huddling with his brethren hundreds of miles south on the ice-covered mainland.
Penguins are an obvious highlight of the Antarctic. Only the emperor and Adélie are true Antarctic natives, though the chinstrap, gentoo and punk-haired macaroni breed around the northern reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula, and king penguins occur on the northern sub-Antarctic islands. While Adélies are increasing in the region as a whole, these tough little birds are struggling in areas of the continent known for climate change, with numbers tumbling by more than 65 per cent.
I had to wait until we reached the South Shetlands for my first experience of penguinspotting. We made landfall and spent an hour with a colony of gentoos, which assembled on the icy shore and were busy preening.
It was about this time that I started to become accustomed to the rapidly changing weather patterns and, most crucially, the cold. One morning, charging from cabin to deck to
Top: the Adélie is the smallest species of penguin in the Antarctic. Above: Wilson’s storm petrel will hover above the water, picking food from just beneath the surface. Left: a curious minke whale inspects a dinghy. spy a sei whale, I didn’t even realise that my bottom half was still clad only in long Johns.
Being an urban birder, I often look beyond the more obvious and colourful to scrutinise the less prominent and usually dun-coloured members of birdkind. Antarctica, in contrast to the UK, has a pronounced lack of small birds. All of its 22 regularly occurring species are in some way connected to a marine existence. There are no raptors, a predatory niche filled by the likes of marauding skuas, kelp gulls and southern giant petrels. I was surprised to learn that several vagrant waders have made it this far; there have even been records of barn swallows swilling around in Antarctic airspace.
Magical moments
Many of my bird and cetacean sightings were gleaned from the ship’s deck, but we made regular excursions in characteristic orange Zodiacs (inflatable rigid dinghies), in a bid for some close-up encounters. The ‘handbrake’ moment of my Antarctic experience came one impossibly blue-sky afternoon, when I was gliding with four other passengers along quiet, flat waters, admiring the surreal formations of the sculptured ice floes. Suddenly, a violent blow erupted from behind me, followed instantly by the acrid smell of severely fishy breath. I spun around to see a 14m-long Atlantic minke whale cruising just below the surface. It swam directly towards and then beneath us, mere centimetres from the underside of the boat. I peered over the other side to see it powering on, head tilted, a kindly eye meeting mine. To the delight of everyone on the water, the whale then spent the next 35 minutes inspecting all the crafts in that small vicinity. If I’d had no interest in nature before that encounter, I would have given up my job and dedicated my life to conservation there and then.
Antarctica is a special continent. With global warming threatening its very survival, I was so happy to have had the opportunity to experience its icy magic before its ecosystems and habitats alter beyond recognition. I may not have been the first black person ever to step foot onto the frozen continent, but I hope I was the first urban birder.
OAKA The Urban Birder, is a writer, broadcaster, speaker and tour guide.
Special thanks to Wildfoot Travel wildfoottravel.com and Hurtigruten hurtigruten.co.uk
Fear
is extremely useful – it helps organisms survive. Its roots can be found about 550 million years ago, when primitive worms evolved specialised nervous systems that helped them respond to external stimuli. Over time, animals evolved many different responses to fear. Some are instinctive – red-eyed tree frogs, for example, lay their eggs in trees but if a hungry snake approaches, well-developed eggs can quickly hatch, saving the tiny tadpoles, which then rain from the sky.
In other cases, the fear response must be learned. Australian conservationists taught endangered Tammar wallabies to be afraid of red foxes – a novel, non-native predator – by allowing them to watch other wallabies getting freaked out. Of course, non-humans don’t perceive things exactly as we do, but given that we share so much underlying neurochemistry, is it really such a stretch to assert that some animals might ‘feel’ scared like we do?
Athird of England’s city trees belong to a handful of species: Leyland cypress, hawthorn, sycamore, silver birch, ash, privet and London plane. Across Europe as a whole, at least half of all street trees are from just five genera. Though these urban trees bring many benefits – shade, wildlife habitats, flood and pollution reduction, carbon capture and a boost to wellbeing – they create problems if not chosen wisely.
Evergreens capture more polluting carbon monoxide, nitrous and sulphurous oxides and dust, yet are wind-pollinated, which means the trees billow out prolific pollen that makes hay fever worse. The London plane withstands heavy pollution, yet releases high volatile organic compounds that react with pollutants to create harmful ground-level ozone. Choosing native trees is better for wildlife and can help air quality, but only in the right places. In narrow, canyon-like streets that trap pollution, low hedges or green ‘living’ walls are better.
Do we plant the wrong street trees?
OMG!
Humans, it turns out, are not the only animals to shorten frequently used words and phrases. A 2020 study of African penguins – very social birds, long studied for their vocal repertoire – discovered that their braying display songs follow the same principles of language compression as human speech. The research was carried out by analysing recordings of penguins in Italian zoos.
In human speech, various linguistic laws, such as Zipf’s Law of brevity, are used to describe how individual words become shortened through heavy usage.
Do animals use slang?
Zipf’s Law, the researchers found, applies equally to African penguins. In fact, this trend towards brevity has also been found in the vocalisations of several non-human primates and across a diverse range of animal behaviour, suggesting that compressing information is a general strategy to make coding and decoding of information more efficient.