last November I've been on a cruise leaving from Ushuaia and going to Antarctic Peninsula. I was very lucky as the planned voyage was slightly changed and, instead of exploring only the western part of the peninsula, we we went to the far less "crowded" eastern part, in search of the Emperor Penguin.. and we found it!!!
Of course one of the main attraction for a birdwatcher is the Drake Passage with all its pelagic birds: during the first day of cruise we saw most of the common and possible Albatrosses, among which Wandering, Southern Royal, Light-mantled Sooty, Grey-headed, Black-browed. Antarctic Prions, Blue Petrels, Wilson's Storm-Petrel, Cape Petrel were VERY common and the ship was always surrounded by at least 50 birds. Really amazing!
As we arrived on the Peninsula, we soon discovered that the Penguins are the most attractive animals on earth: they are, first of all, very cute and tame; as a human arrives on the beach the look at it quite curious and some of them approaches to see these "strange penguins". We managed too see all penguin species of the peninsula, that are Adelie's, Chinstrap, Gentoo and Antarctic. And we were extremly lucky to see a couple of Emperors on the ice pack quite south east.
The other main characters of the Peninsula are the Skuas and the Snow Petrel. As for the Skuas, it is possible to see both the Subantarctic (lonbbergii) and the South-Polar (mackormicki), both busy with penguins' eggs. Snow Petrel are on the opposite the angels of antarctica, purely white and extremely lovely!
I'm not so good with words, so I prefer to show you some pictures. I've uploaded a lot of pics at
http://www.pbase.com/gdl
Hope you'll enjoy them!
Giorgio