Come and sit with me in the tussock, looking out across the megaherb gardens on Campbell Island. Tuck down and nest in the golden grass, sheltered from the wind strafing the ridge above us. It can’t howl in our ears here, but it fills the air with a hissing, rushing, river-sound, a constant white-noise roar. Wrapped in the slightly dusty warm smell of the tussock, the ground is peaty and springy-soft, the perfect place to rest after a slippery walk up the hill.
Look down around you, at all the brilliant colours and textures of subantarctic flora. Blooming Pleurophyllum in shades of purple, some vibrant and royal, some a mere hint of lavender. Incongruous magenta broccoli. Sharp, architectural curves of silver leaves, lush tangles of green, giant corrugated elephant-ears. Maroon prickly ferns, a small damp pipit combing their fronds for tiny insect prey, burnt oranges in the end of the Bulbinella. A rainbow beneath a grey grey sky. It rains here nearly every day of the year, and the plants love it.
The vista is mist-bound but wide, stretching into the murky ridgelines. Northeast harbour snakes a tendril of silver water inland, hollowing out a brindled basin between the wide ridges. Dracophyllum scrub darkens the distant hills as they drop towards the sea. Behind us, if we stood to face the wind, the land falls away and ends abruptly in the western cliffs, white and wave-beaten. Dent island is a dark tooth out in the bay, and beyond that the sea fades into the mist, a horizon not far away. Everything beyond the island is a mystery.
Across on the next ridge, there are white shapes hovering in the mist. Immense but shrunk by distance, wide wings and torpedo-bodies. On the wind, a faint rattling scream. Southern Royal albatrosses, showing off their wild-wind mastery. They lift and drop, riding the gusts up the slopes to land in circled gamming-groups, raising their wings to the snapping winds and screaming at each other. An albatross greeting. One sails overhead, a deep jet-fighter roar coming from the wind through its outstretched primaries.
With a thump that travels through the ground and into your bones, an albatross lands nearby between two squat tussocks. And then another. They are drawn to each other, small intimate groups forming across the hillside. We’ve watched them soar the seas for days, but here on land they are another creature entirely. Stately and massive. Just how massive is hard to fathom against the waves. Standing a few meters away, it becomes very apparent just how enormous these oceanic birds are. A three-meter wingspan is complicated origami in high winds, but they fold and tuck into a neat package, a shingle of black feathers against soft white. In the mist they glow, soft around the edges and otherworldly. Their eyes are dark and fathomless. Their bills are a permanent smile, gentle and curious.
Albatross are not made for land, but once they get past the shock of landing, they adapt well. They swagger through the grass, weaving their heads from side to side. They fling their necks skyward and wail into the wind, a rattling catlike scream, punctuated by crack-popping and bill-clattering. They greet and preen, carefully drawing their wicked hooked bill-tip through each other’s feathers. These children of the sky look like clouds that have crash landed, stranded, and they comfort each other this sudden loss of grace. Wings raised in arcs as wide as they sky, they turn in an intricate dance. These birds are still learning the moves, perfecting their display in the hopes of finding the perfect partner, one whose dance matches theirs in every wild call, clacker and bill and wing-sweep, head-toss and gentle preen.
Some of the older birds are settled on their nests, scattered throughout the tussock. Encircled by vegetation, they’re tucked in and cozy despite the winds. Eyes closed and comfortable in a place most would describe as bleak. Surrounded by incongruous plants that their marine nutrients have helped to grow. Albatrosses and other seabirds are that vital link between sea and land, connecting the cycle of energy transfer between ecosystems. They don’t know that, of course. But we can appreciate how important they are, and how beautiful.
Gravity cannot hold them for very long. From necessity, incubating birds will sit for days and sometimes weeks. But these youngsters are unbound, with no responsibility to raise the next generation – not just yet. In the roaring forties they don’t often need much to lift off again. A few slaps of paddle-feet against the ground, wings unfurled to catch lift and soar. The ground drops away, falls behind. They chase the breeze out into the open air above the clifftops, out over the ocean. We spot one with a band wrapped around one leg – and a tiny device attached. It’s a geolocator, an archival tag that records day length. I know this because I’ve attached those self-same devices to other seabirds to learn their secrets. Once it’s retrieved it will tell us where this bird has been when it vanishes over the horizon, where it goes to feed, how it wanders through the Southern ocean. The life at sea that we catch glimpses of when we voyage out beyond our horizons.
It is so much easier for them to come and go here than it is for us. This is their home, and they are made for it. We have endured a swelly beating to arrive here on a tough little ship. Sitting in the calm of Perseverance harbour, though, the endless tiresome rolling of the past 48 hours fades into insignificance. Just as we fade into insignificance in this wildest of wild places, surrounded and eye-to-eye with the birds that call it home.
