31 Jan 2022

Incredible Floral and Albatross Displays on Campbell Island

"A floral display second to none outside the tropics" stated Sir Joseph Hooker in 1840 on seeing the mountainsides of Campbell Island in their full flowering glory. Since then the island was grazed heavily, however after sheep were removed it has been making a dramatic comeback.

This week the flowering has been stunning, with acres of mauve and purple Pleurophyllum daisies foregrounding dramatic vistas of albatross-dotted mountainsides and craggy coastlines. The young Southern Royal Albatross were 'gamming' or socialising and courting, after spending their first few years since fledging in solitary traverse of the Southern Ocean.

Yesterday we sat spellbound as we watched a group of 4 birds gamming among the megaherbs on the back of Mt Honey, the highest peak on the island; backgrounded by the spiky form of Jacquemart Island and Six Foot Lake, framed between the sweeping flanks of Puiseux and Eboule Peaks. They displayed to each other with haunting calls, head-waving, beak-clacking and displaying their 3-metre wingspans while other birds soared so low across the tussock-clad mountainside to check them out, that we could hear the air-rip of their wings as they glided over us.

Image from file © M.Potter, Heritage Expeditions