This
morning we visited a colony of guillemot.
The ship pulled right up to the face of a cliff, one that plunges deep
into the sea. Fog was everywhere, the
ocean was black, and in front of us was a cliff around 200 feet in height. Thousands of black-backed white-bellied birds
were perched in groups across the face as far as we could see in the fog. They were less screechy and less dense than
the kittiwakes we saw earlier in the week, but still loud, and in the fog,
completely amazing.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Another
bear, this time a close encounter. We
first saw him from a great distance. He
was far back on the ice and we were a great distance back in the ocean. We crept our way slowly forward towards the
ice while he walked curiously in our direction.
Slowly, cautiously, we approached each other for what must have been at
least a half an hour. (Forty-five
minutes? An hour? It was impossible to tell as the adrenaline
seemed to slow time and the sun never moved.) Everyone on board was completely silent,
worried that the slightest sound might spook him and send him back away from us
across the ice.
As he
neared he came across the corpse of a bird which he ate as well as he could;
the feathers seemed to stick in his mouth in a way that couldn't have felt
pleasant. After his small meal he came
right up next to our ship. He was big
and beautiful and scarred yet a little skinny... I'm sure if I'd been standing
on the ice next to him, I'd have been the next meal.We sat there together for (what felt like) a long while, him investigating the humans while the humans took pictures and stared. Then, after a bit, he turned around and disappeared again, ambling off into the white.
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