We saw plenty of birds on my tour of the islands, most notable being another few macaroni penguins mixed in with the rockhoppers. I also saw my first rock shags, some blackish oystercatchers and a juvenile black-crowned night heron.
A lot of the rockhoppers are moulting and looking rather miserable!
There were a large number of turkey vultures around, particularly at the shag colony, which was explained when I spotted a shag corpse being guarded over by a couple of caracaras. Despite their size, the turkey vultures are rather timid and flew off quickly when I walked in their direction. They made a very impressive sight circling around overhead whilst I sat on the rocks with the shags.
I’ve seen a lot of king/imperial shags but until today had yet to see any rock shags. At first I only spotted king shags in this colony but then I noticed that there were some rock shags mixed amongst them. They were all on the north side of the rocks so the sun was directly behind them.
This juvenile night heron was standing amongst the rock shags but then flew off to another set of rocks, far more convenient for me in terms of the light direction!
Finally, at the same stretch of beach I spotted a family of blackish oystercatchers, which seem to be less common than the magellanic oystercatchers.
