Dave Hartley

We’ll be giving a talk to the Golden Gate Audubon Society on Thursday July 15. The presentation is entitled “Midway Atoll: 60 people and 2 Million Birds”. The synopsis of the talk is:

“Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge has opened to small groups of visitors again. This nature lover’s paradise supports 17 seabird species, including the largest Laysan Albatross colony in the world. Dave Hartley and Jeanine Lovett’s presentation is based on a trip they took to the atoll in 2009. Through photographs, they will show life in the Albatross colony—including Laysan, Black-footed, and Short-tailed Albatrosses—along with Red-tailed Tropicbirds, Red-footed Boobies, Great Frigatebirds, White Terns, and Laysan Ducks. They will also discuss the environmental issues affecting the atoll.”

This will take place on Thursday July 15; 7pm refreshments, 7:30pm program.

The talk will be in the First Unitarian Universalist Church and Center located at 1187 Franklin street (at Geary), San Francisco.

I’m pleased to announce that I was one of the winners in the 2009 Nature’s Best Ocean Views competition. The winning photograph was of a Weddell Seal. Here’s the story behind the image:

“We hiked about a mile across six feet of ice in Admiralty Sound with the intention of photographing a small Adelie penguin rookery. Close by was a small group of Weddell seals, sleeping near to their breathing hole.

True to form, the seals noisely slept on their sides. Eventually, one woke up, lifted its head and peered over at me curiously. I fired off a few frames thinking he would go back to sleep. But instead, he lifted his head and hind flippers high off the ground in a long graceful stretch, before finally rolling over and falling back asleep.”

Sailing to Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic destinations involves spending days en route. For trips that involve going to multiple locations, these days of “down time” could be spent catching up on sleep or editing photos. However, even though the oceans are vast open spaces, there are still a lot of opportunities to photograph. The skies can contain numerous birds, many of which follow ships. Many hours can be spent photographing Black-Browed Albatross, Southern Giant Petrels and Wandering Albatross as they effortlessly fly past. The photograph shows a Wandering Albatross. Wandering Albatross are the largest flying birds, with wingspans reaching 2.5 to 3.5m. The photo was taken at the following coordinates which you can paste into Google Earth:

52 26.778S 049 29.911W

It’s not a great picture but what caught my eye was the flash of red. Looking at the image on a computer, the bird had a red tag with the number L97. My wife also had photographs showing the tag identification so we talked to Chris Edwards who was the Expedition leader. Chris has spent quite a bit of time in Antarctica and his son, Ewan, is stationed at Bird Island, which has a population of Wandering Albatross. We gave Chris copies of the photograph and the GPS location and he forwarded them to his son. Here is the information on the bird:

“The bird was ringed in 1990 on Bird Island, presumably as a chick. It departed and returned during the 1994-1999 summers as a non-breeder. It bred in 2000 but not since then, possibly because its mate had not returned.”

That’s pretty amazing that we can see a bird in the middle of no-where and then find out quite a bit about its history.