Wildlife Photography Blog

Dr. P took Dr. K and two assistant photographers to tour the Falkland Islands (they should be renamed the Breezy Islands) on a three-week personal tour in January of 2018. Our tour guide was Georgina Strange, a Falklands native. She was trained by her father Ian, the man who wrote the book (actually ten books) on the Falkland Islands 40 years ago. She knows her stuff, and was our personal tour guide par excellence! We encountered warm and competent Falklanders that took us around and gave us front row seats to all of the wildlife that you will meet on this page.

King penguins are the largest penguins after the Emperor. Even though you can find an occasional one on different small islands within the Falkland Islands, most of them congregate at Volunteer Point. Derek and Trudy Patterson run the show here, and we stayed in their house with them. They are a wealth of knowledge regarding the area, and gave us free roam of the areas where the penguins congregated. Make sure you do not miss the video at the end of the Magellanic Penguin stalking Dr. P. It is a 4 hour off-road drive to get to Volunteer Point from

These birds go by several names: Imperial Shag, Imperial Cormorant, King Cormorants, Blue-eyed shag, Blue-eyed Cormorant. They are graceful fliers, but ungainly on land due to the position of their legs. They streak past as they pursue a diet of fish and squid It's a different story when they come in for a landing. As they get near the colony they put on the brakes, flop their wings, and drop unceremoniously in the middle of the flock, sometimes knocking other birds over. Its quite entertaining as you will see from the following photos. Once they are done crashing into each other they

On Sea Lion Island we came across groups of juvenile male elephant seals that were resting and molting. They had been feeding out in the open ocean for several months, and were resting up for their next journey into the sea. These juveniles are big boys, weighing up to 2,000 pounds. After seeing how big these juveniles are, it's hard to imagine the size of the mature male elephant seals that are up to 4x larger. The big guys come to this beach in October and November each year to gather their harems and mate. At the same time, the

These guys are characters, and are sometimes called Jackass penguins due to the braying sound they make and their silly antics. Unlike the rookeries where the Gentoo, Rockhopper and King penguins raise their chicks, the Magellanic penguins raise their chicks in burrows. Our first encounter with them was while walking towards the the beach where the juvenile male elephant seals lounged around. Their chicks were several months old, and would soon be leaving the burrow to go off on their own. When we got to the beach some of the adults were going out for their morning fishing expedition They