Page 55 - 2008 NZ Subantarctic Islands

are practicing the skills they will need when they return in the

following year with serious business on their minds. The elaborate
courtship dances will evolve into the behavior that allows the pair

bonds to recognize each other every other year when they return
to mate and raise a chick once again.

Our chance to watch the “gamming” involved 5 birds at first, but
then one of them decided that “five is a crowd” so he left the

other four to their socializing. There was much spreading of wings
presumably to demonstrate size, dancing in circles to show

stamina and strength perhaps, criss-crossing of bills with one
another creating a clicking sound, and pointing their long bills

straight up into the sky. The birds are so brilliantly white and
impressive in size against the beautiful background of the

megaherbs covering the rolling ground around them. The activity
was awe-inspiring and curiously uplifting.

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to describe the megaherbs. On
this island the major plants were the yellow bulbinella and the

pink-tinged unbellifers, as well as three types of endemic daisies
with colors ranging from pale yellow to white and even mauve.

Tiny pipits perched on the flower spires singing and calling out
their territories using these tallest “structures” in the landscape.

The landscape was covered with these beautiful flowers so that
whole island resembled Joseph’s coat of many colors spread out
for the albatross to tread upon. The grasses and tussocks in the

tundra areas were also beautiful (except when they were catching
at my boots) in their many shades of green with silvery gray

undersides on the shafts. There are 233 different plants on
Enderby Island with 84% of them indigenous. At least 5 plants live

only on the Auckland Island group: two gentians, a buttercup, a
fruitless plantain, and the bellicose grass (to me at least) Poa

55