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Deception island | 23 July 2018 |
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Deception Island is the name of an desolate island in the Antarctic north of the Antarctic peninsula. It is a caldera: a very large, circular hollow that remains when the central part of a volcano falls in after an eruption. The centre of the island is a save harbour, but it was named because deception as the central part did not exist. After we lost all the arctic tern chicks in town, we decided to go to the tern paradise to see at least some terns with their chicks. But we can name the tern paradise now deception island. The island was completely empty without any nesting terns. A predator had removed everything. Was it an arctic fox? But foxes are rarely swimming. Was it a polar bear? But some of the chicks would have been able to swim off the island. Was it a glaucous gull coming inland? We will never know but the result was disappointing. A deception. What is left of tern colonies in the fjord? Not much. We saw them all disappear due to predation. The general village, the oil drum enclosure, on the island Gerdøya due to a permanent fox on the island, on Storholmen where we observed more than 100 terns renesting and disappear, or now in the tern paradise. It is a pity as there seems to be an excessive amount of young fish in the fjord. We see terns flying with 5 cm herring all the time. The first picture is how the island looked on 23 June. The second picture is made 10 days earlier. | |
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So a picture of a flower instead. This is Saxifraga aizoides, yellow saxifrage. | |
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| 20180723, 12:06 | 20180723, 21:00 | 20180724, 17:55 | all items shown with small pics | ||||
| grass growth | deception island | second goose catch |