Heading for South Georgia.

 After a visit to Port Stanley, on the Falkland Islands, an interesting place with lots of history, it was back to sea to head to one of the greatest places for wildlife on the planet. South Georgia.

On the way Lisa and I spent many hours on the deck, looking out for seabirds, whales and dolphins. We had a few lovely encounters with Peale's Dolphins, although they were mainly playing under the bow of the ship, so difficult to see in any detail. However, occasionally one or two would swim out and play in the bow-wave. We did have many whale encounters, but these were generally seeing the blow sprays in the distance.

Peale's Dolphin.

We were very lucky to encounter many species of Petrel on the way. This included the Atlantic Petrel and the rare White-headed Petrel. This was possibly the rarest bird we managed to see. Blue Petrel were seen most days we were at sea as well as the Giant Petrel. We also saw several examples of leucistic Giant Petrels. We also started to see different species of albatross, with adult and immature Grey-headed Albatross being my favourite, although the Light-mantled Sooty Albatross were also very special, although the best views of these were in pretty poor lighting conditions. Several times during the 2nd day at sea we had groups of 9 Atlantic Petrel. It may have been the same group coming back throughout the day, but we still saw many of these hard to see birds. Unfortunately, the closest encounters happened later on when the skies had darkened, so the better pictures were earlier in the day.

Atlantic Petrel.

White-headed Petrel.

Blue Petrel.

Black-bellied Storm Petrel.

Leucistic Giant Petrel.

Grey-headed Albatross.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross.

On the 3rd morning we started the approach to South Georgia with stunning scenery and a few small icebergs. As we were at the back of the ship we didn't see the first of the much larger icebergs until it was passing by. It was an amazing blue colour, and then to our surprise and delight, we saw several Chinstrap Penguins sitting on top of the iceberg. How the birds got there is a bit of a mystery, but it made the iceberg look even more stunning.

Blue Iceberg complete with a group of Chinstrap Penguins.

As we went past the iceberg it gradually fell behind us giving us some great views, eventually becoming just a distant view.

Blue Iceberg complete with the Chinstrap Penguins, Giant Petrel and Black-browed Albatross flying.

With lots of snow on the land we were also treated to many great views.

South Georgia land, an Iceberg and a Grey-headed Albatross.

Another Grey-headed Albatross and land.

The next post will be of the some of the wildlife we saw on South Georgia.