Half Term

Just a few random photos left over from half term. Some more amazing skies over our avenue. Even after nearly six months here I still cannot stop thinking 'big skies'. I just love the varied colours and rapidly changing weather down here. (Not so much when I am stuck outdoors in it though!).

Usually there is an after school club swim but with half term the slot was kept open and they made it a soft play fun session. This was the best I could get of the boy, he spent most of his time on a large black intertube with friends and his back to me.

This little one however was very happy to pose for me even if it mostly meant me trying to capture her underwater.

And this one needs her name changed to seal, she adores the water and spends most of her time diving down to collect rings and items off the bottom of the deepend. I would love to get her some lessons but unfortunately there isn't anyone to teach down here at present.

We had our own private viewing of the tooth fairy during the week also as everyone was watching the first England football game. I offered for the guys to postpone it to another day but like us he is more of a rugby man and was happy to still put it on. How lucky were we a whole movie theatre to ourselves. The film was actually quite funny which was a relief. We also visited San Carlos but I will let J fill you in with that one.

Long Tailed Meadowlark or Military Starling

The one thing John and I have noticed living in the Falklands is the lack of birdsong in our gardens. We do have birds, Meadowlarks, thrushes, sparrows and finches, plus the giant turkey vultures and caracaras and yet there is very little sound from them. Now it could be that the wind takes the noise away before we hear it which is likely but telephone calls back home reinforce the lack of sound here as I can so clearly hear the birds in my parents garden singing their hearts out. Yesterday I put out some left over porridge that we had for breakfast and the garden was soon alive with the Meadowlark above. From behind this bird looks fairly dull and traditional, but as it turns around you are bombarded with its bright almost fluorescent chest.

These pictures have not been enhanced other than lightening the odd picture. Their chests really are that bright orange red colour.

Euan helped me to clean the dining room window and spread out some bread in the back garden so I could try to take some photos of them. All of these pictures have been taken through a pane of glass so please excuse the slightly fuzzy edges to some of them.

We probably had over a dozen birds in the garden within seconds of us coming in and shutting the back door. With several inches of snow on the ground I suspect they are fairly hungry.

According to my wildlife book, the Meadowlark is restricted to the Falkland Islands, although there is another race found in Southern South America. They stand about 4-5 inches tall and measure around 9.6-10 inches long. The male has a deep vermilion breast and throat and red lores extending into an off white eye stripe. The bill is heavy and pointed, appearing oversized in relation to head. The female in comparison have a much paler red breast, generally lighter plumage and is slightly smaller than the male. Juveniles are ghost images of the female. They take a variety of food, including earthworms, caterpillars, larvae, pupae and marine invertebrates such as amphipods. The females are soley responsible for collecting and feeding the young, often stockpiling food before taking it to the nest. The most the male does apparently is to visit the nest to remove droppings!! They are supposed to be very territorial and isolated during breeding season but become one happy family through the winter.

This bird, a Falkland Thrush was rather stroppy and spent most of its time chasing away
the military starlings. It would have been better off just eating the bread as it seemed to waste so much energy chasing everyone around.

Most of the birds just waited till it hopped over the fence chasing someone and then went back to eating the bread. I think the one below was either a female or a juvenile as it was alot paler than the rest.

As we sat and watched we were treated to the beautiful rainbow below. We have had a lot of rainbows over the last week. They seem to start of very faded, ramp it up to full brightness and then disappear in around five minutes.

Somebody else enjoyed watching the birds in the garden too even if it did mean I had to clean my window of nose prints once I was done!

There was lots of squeaking and excited yips from my boy. There is nothing wrong with his eye sight even though his hearing has gone.

So another bird to add to our Falkland Island collection. I still need to get a really descent picture of the very ugly turkey vultures. They have taken to sitting on the house roofs recently to try and get some warmth off the tiles. I cannot seem to find any love for the creatures and find them rather threatening at times, especially when they gather in groups.

Hope everyone is well, stay safe love Helen

Belated Father's Day Wishes

Yesterday was a busy day for us, we had most of Jones Avenue around for "Fixmas" since christmas here is usually a barbeque and the beach!! We had 17 adults and 14 children in the house, thankfully we had the weather for it and was able to chuck the children out to go sledging in the afternoon.

I had wanted to post to say Happy Fathers day to all the Dad's in my life. This one above for creating three beautiful children with me, supporting them and me and loving us unconditionally.

My Dad for being so many things to me but for loving me and supporting me in everything I do.

And John's Dad for the love he shows his Son and all of his Grandchildren. I hope you had a super day, we are sad that we were so far away and that we couldn't share in the day with you, but you were definitely in our hearts, we love you.

Yesterdays Snow Fun

Yesterday the school bus was cancelled and it was fortunate that I had already decided to walk the children to school. I allowed them a few runs down the hill at the back of us with our latest dusting of snow and then it was straight onto school much to Euan's annoyance!

Euan was going to a friends for tea that lives right next door almost to the slope, so when I picked the girls up I promised to take them to once they had got changed. Ellie managed to invite her friend Siobhan for tea with the promise that they would do their homework together once we got back from sledging.

The faces that Ellie pulled where so funny. Most of my pictures are blurry as light was fading fast, yet somehow I love them all the more for it. Here she is racing down the hill with one of my neighbours children and by the look on her face it was much faster than she thought!

Miss Muppet was up next and no fear of speed she whizzed past me squealing with joy.

She kept trying to get on the back of her best friends sledge but it kept moving away as soon as she tried to sit down. Eventually she got one of the Mums to hold it for her so she could get on.

Euan was there with his friend and he was having a whale of a time. "This is the best fun I have had in ages Mum" was heard as he hurtled past me, which is good because he has been a bit of a 'Kevin' recently.

That was just before he wiped out for about the 50th time at the bottom. Thank goodness I had made him put his waterproofs on.

We are forecast to get a dumping of snow again tonight which I am sure will please the troops in this household.

I will however not be taking the dog to school with me tomorrow. I thought it would be a brilliant walk for him as dogs are no longer allowed on Bertha's beach (so sad). So I kept him on the lead to school, dropped the kids off and made my way back. When I was safely over the road I let him off and immediately he shot off under the barbed wire and chased a flock of geese. No problem I thought he is headed in the direction of home and I will catch him up at the other end of the wire. Ummm no, he went hurtling past me still on the opposite side of the wire and totally didn't see me. I was screaming at him but because of his deafness he couldn't hear. I thought he would get to the bottom of the wire and pick up my scent and follow me back up on the right side. NO! he was going so fast that he carried on, back across the road in front of a bloody police car no less and headed back towards school. S..t was my first reaction and I started to leg it back to him. He must have decided the scent was cold because he no sooner did that then turned back around and headed back towards me. He was running across (thankfully no cars this time) the road and along it towards home. He still hadn't seen me. I was shouting like an idiot and finally he stopped and looked around. He saw me and came racing over with a very sheepish and worried look on his face. He wasn't the only one. He has become a liability off the lead now in public places because he simply cannot hear anything. I managed to go out twice today to the shops for twenty minutes and he was still on the same spot on the sofa, laid on his back legs in the air and non the wiser that I had been out. I find it so sad but I am going to have to think about getting one of those yucky extendable leads as I cannot really let him off on base again. I was so worried he was going to get run over today as the cars would not have been able to stop on the snow. Why do our loved ones have to get old hey?

On a cheerier note, the girls were true to their promise and finished their big write off with very little direction from me. We had homemade tomato and lentil soup for tea and the I headed off to bed to read my book that Jenny from Crudwell's Bookclub kindly sent me.

Bleaker Revisited

On the 6th of June we all headed over to Bleaker for a nights break away from MPA. The last time the whole family was here was over 4 years ago when we visited John on his 4 month unaccompanied posting. It is a lovely island that used to be known as Long Island and then became Breaker Island for a while due to the large waves that crashed against it. The island covers 5,155 acres with a varied coastline of low cliffs, sloping bedrock beaches, wide sandy bays and sheltered coves. It is long and thin, never more than 2 miles wide and low lying, rarely exceeding 15m, except for Semaphore Hill which reaches 27m. John and the kids are stood on Semaphore hill in the above picture. The settlement itself is privately owned and is used mainly for meat production. It has three houses, one for the owner, one for the manager and the other is Cobbs Cottage where we stayed. It can sleep 5 and in our view is the nicest accomodation on the islands.

We arrived at lunch, had a bite to eat and then headed out to explore. Although it was slightly miserable and damp we all bundled up in our waterproofs undetered by the weather. We went over the top of Semaphore Hill and towards Sandy Bay. It is a stunning beach which is just over 3/4 of a mile long. The kids had been bickering all morning but soon the sea breeze and ocean noise calmed everyone down. They even managed to get along and play together.

Maddie was her usual bossy and humourous self and pointing us all in the right direction. The ground changes from grass into a large but smooth boulders with the odd plant dotted through for good measure and then into an expanisve mass of smooth sand.

John was very observant and noticed this fella out in the water watching our approach. We think it might have been a fur seal.

It followed us along the beach for a little while and then decided it didn't like me trying to get close to the water's edge to take photos and headed off into the distance.

A little way further up the beach we came across our first set of tracks, a sure sign that there was some fishy smelling penguins somewhere in the vicinity.

As we approached the top end of Sandy Bay John again noticed movement out in the water. Pretty soon we could see huge groups of penguins popping in and out of the water, they are so humurous to watch. This particular group were surfing the waves as they came in.

Then as they come into shore the do this funny launch movement where they pop straight up out of the water and fling themselves forward onto the beach. John took these photos as I didn't manage to focus the camera on any, I think I was to busy just watching.

It was starting to get dark so we turned around and made our way back to the cottage for a well earned hot orange and some chicken curry for tea. These little fellas also accompanied us up and down the beach squawking away every time one of the kids got to close.

We had a quick five minutes just before we went in to revisit the Sei Whale bones which are just at the shores edge. They had definitely degraded since we last saw them and are covered in lots of green algae now.

The cottage comes well equipped with a TV (although no signal) and a video player. It has loads of books and films to choose from along with the odd CD to listen to. Euan wanted to do a jigsaw puzzle like last time and had hoped to do the 2000 piece one. John managed to talk him around to just trying the 1000 piece puzzle first which was fortunate as Euan very rapidly lost interest. John was determined that he was not going to go to bed until he had finished it so in desperation I broke my vow not to help him and spent an hour or so putting pieces in.

The next morning we had a lazy breakfast and then togged ourselves up again to go out. I was hoping to get a few more pictures of the penguins in the sea in a better light.

We decided to try and recreate the photo below that was taken just shy of four years ago. I couldn't remember what order they were all in but you can certainly see a difference never the less. I think the biggest change I see is in Maddie, she has lost those baby curls and some of the chubby cheeks.

Bouncy Sand, well that's what the kids call it. Maddie and Euan are seeing how far they can sink before the wellies get stuck! Mum was a spoil sport and stopped it before the sand oozed over the top of them as she knew it would be her fishing it out or listening to the whining when one of them had to walk back squelching!!

The light was stunning, it was almost like a late afternoon light, low slung sun and golden light. One of John's favourite things to do is to stand and just watch the sea. It was nice to see him relax and physically see his shoulders come down a notch or two. It has been a busy little job for him.

Madame was up to her usual tricks, she loves to just sit and draw in the sand.

Well that is until there is a competition to take part in. She may not be the quickest but she certainly seems to have more staying power than the other two, that is unless Miss Ellie gets her determined head on and fights to be first!

Or if there is a good lump of seaweed to be kicked, pulled or thrown.

This day we didn't have a seal audience we had one of the bovine variety. There is something very strange about seeing cows on the beach, especially cows that were stood eating seaweed.

These little guys are called Snowy Sheathbills and they just potter about at the shore line running up and down with the incoming surf. They were not overly bothered by us though.

Mr Man back up to his usual tricks.

and Mini Man having a moment to himself to.

Slippery rocks and crashing waves mark the end of the bay and a chance to just sit and view the sea. Unfortunately for me there were very few penguins hooping about in the sea so no photos :( I did manage to capture this guy though and for once he wasn't pulling a silly face.

We were joined by a pair of flightless Steamer ducks. They are the largest ducks to be found in the Falklands. They feed off the kelp beds and close inshore on a variety of marine life but mostly on shellfish such as chitons and limpets. Although unable to fly they are incredibly rapid over water with paddle like wingbeats, hence steams and the name steamer duck.

Once we finished on the beach we decided to head across land to the opposite shore and to pass by an area known as big pond that sits in the middle. Elaine who manages the island had told us there was a pair of black necked swans who had successfully mated and produced five offspring.

We were lucky enough to see all of them and the offspring as so big now it was difficult to tell them apart. Apparently they live there all year round, only occassionally moving over to small neighbouring islands to rear their young.

Somebody had a tizzy and wasn't really in the mood to have her picture taken. I found this hilarious as it really sums my lot up, one upset, one happy and then one complete nutter ( check her out in the background). It is generally the oldest two that have the breakdowns.

We got back in plenty of time to have a spot of lunch and a tidy up before the heli came to pick us up for the return journey. The kids enjoyed a sneaky video and checked out the childrens packs that Elaine had very kindly given them.

Goodbye to Bleaker, hopefully not for four years this time - Granny and Grandad we thought a visit there might be good when you come down to see us.

An aerial view of the end of the beach and the Gentoo colony. Next time we decided we needed to write something in the sand so we could get a shot from the air. We had tried to spell Bleaker out in the sand using the kids as the straight sections of letters but it was really difficult to photograph it. I think we also wrote it to close to the shore as it was washed away by the time we got airborne.

As we flew over Swan Inlet, the sun was getting lower still and covering everything in a shimmery light. It was so bright most things were only viewed in silhouette, simply stunning to witness.

Yet another big thank you to the helicopter crews for making all of this possible and for giving us safe passage home.