Recent Photos Gallery - July 2019

Welcome to the July 2019 Recent Photos Gallery, with images from 14 itineraries! Don’t adjust that thermostat during these dog days of summer. Let’s adjust our latitude and altitude instead. Doug Gochfeld has just sent in a series of images from the Spitsbergen & Svalbard Archipelago tour, which cruises into the ice above Arctic Norway. We begin with that remarkable tour, guided by John Coons for his ninth running, with Doug on his first. Thanks for cooling off with us!

Atlantic Puffins are remarkable, hardy birds. They nest as far north as northern Svalbard (81 N latitude), and they spend the first three years of their lives continuously at sea, over deep water, so supremely adapted to the marine environment are they. And when it comes time to breed as adults, they transform into creatures as beautiful as any parrot.

Donna Pomeroy caught these Barnacle Geese—the goose in front, the larger gander beyond her—in a quiet moment during a visit ashore. About 24,000 breed at Svalbard and another 138,000 or so around Novaya Zemlya to the east, the stronghold of this species. There is also a population in Greenland. The closest relative to this species? Cackling Goose.

The largest animal ever to have inhabited the planet, Blue Whale is a creature we hope to see on two of our tours: Spitsbergen and Slice of California. This beautiful young Blue seemed almost small next to our ship, the 353-foot MV Hondius, the world’s first Polar Class 6 cruise vessel.

Bundled up but bare-handed in Magdalenafjord, our crew is here on the edge of their seats, on serious lookout for Polar Bears, Walruses, Ivory Gulls—anything that appears could be of great interest. In addition to being quick transports to shore, the zodiacs gave the group a versatile way to explore the maritime landscape of Svalbard.

Walruses! The name likely derives from the Germanic for “whale-horse,” and it’s no exaggeration. Large males can weigh over 2 tons. The tusks, elongated canine teeth, grow to 3 feet or more and are used mostly for dominance and combat, as well as to maintain ice holes and to climb out of them onto the ice.

Alkornet. This beautiful site is situated on the Isfjorden (Ice Fjord), in southern Oscar II Land, on the western coast of Spitsbergen. Over 10,000 breeding pairs of seabirds nest on the cliffs of this mountain, and the lush plain below (fertilized by seabirds) teems with Barnacle Geese, Arctic Foxes, and Svalbard Reindeer.

A reindeer frolicking in the brief summer warmth: Svalbard Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) is the smallest of the reindeer, or caribou as they are called in the New World.

Where there are seabird cliffs, there are predators and kleptoparasites, like this light-morph Parasitic Jaeger (which also happened to have a nest nearby). This particular Black-legged Kittiwake declined to be mugged.

Ultimately, to see the far-northern wildlife, the group traveled northward, into the pack ice, here northwest of Svalbard.

And there it was, at Ny Alesund, like a volant fragment of its icy world, an adult Ivory Gull, a species now considered near-threatened and numbering fewer than 50,000, possibly fewer than 20,000.

And nearby, the species that "made us hold our breath when we saw it first and each time thereafter." Our group saw Polar Bear on five captivating days in a row.

Wait. Wait a minute. Penguins don’t live in the Arctic … our slideshow has moved to another location. Where are we now?

Here’s a clue: an American Flamingo.

Still haven't guessed? Another clue: a prickly pear cactus that grows to tree heights near the ocean.

And a finch that lives in the cactus. Now ... where do we find a Cactus Finch?

Yes! The same place we find the world’s most beautiful (arguably) gull, the Swallow-tailed Gull - in the Galapagos archipelago, off the coast of Ecuador. So that was a Galapagos Penguin, the northernmost species of its family.

Our Galapagos tour, guided by Mitch Lysinger and Jairo Gusqui, was grand this month, with Darwin’s famed finches and a host of seabirds putting in timely appearances, including those impressive frigatebirds, both the Magnificent (like this one) and the Great. Welcome, too, were the cooling breezes off the Humboldt Current of the Pacific.

One of the world’s two tree-nesting booby species, Red-footed Boobies were common, both in the dark morph (as here) and in the light. Masked, Nazca, and those adorable Blue-footed Boobies also entertained the group as only courting, displaying boobies can.

And it was a real privilege to study the critically endangered Waved Albatross at the nest. We salute all of the conservation biologists working to help this and other magnificent seabirds in the Galapagos. And we thank participant Barry Tillman for the wonderful bird images and participant Paul Kittle for the evocative photo of the tree cactus on Santa Cruz Island!

We hop over now to the South American mainland, where our group beside their trusty-ish conveyance (“Mi Joyita” - “My Little Gem”), beaming despite the rain, has just seen a fine bird on the Colombia: Medellin Escape tour with Jesse Fagan and Daniel Uribe.

Behold the joyita - Grallaria nuchalis, the Chestnut-naped Antpitta! This bird at Pena Blanca near Jardin was truly cooperative, even taking a worm from Jesse's hand. Although Chestnut-naped also ranges into Ecuador and Peru, Colombia is a great place to see it, along with 26 other species of antpitta.

The Medellin Escape offers a fine mix of widespread Andean birds and very scarce, often endangered Colombian endemics, like this brilliant Red-bellied Grackle, here at Cantos de Agua, in the city of Medellin. This species is so vividly red below that it has the name Hypopyrrhus pyrohypogaster - or Red Below, Red Belly Below.