In my humble opinion, anyone with an interest in avian photography will at some point wonder where is good location to capture photos of penguins in their natural environment. After several years discussing this question in countless conversations with dozens of like-minded friends, I noticed that one location consistently popped up as an ideal location: the Falkland Islands.
Also known as the Islas Malvinas, the Falklands are a remote South Atlantic archipelago located off the southern coast of Argentina, almost to the tip of Tierra Del Fuego. There are two main islands, East and West Falkland, and 776 smaller islands, most of which are uninhabited. The last census indicates the islands are home to less than 3,500 people, but that makes it an ideal for a variety of amazing wildlife including five species of penguins. During nesting season, thousands of these birds find their way to certain islands and beaches, making it a great place to photograph them. However, access to the Falklands is limited. Only one flight a week enters and leaves the islands and it only departs from specific airports far to the global south. All told you want to plan three days of travel (each way) from North America to get to and from the Falklands. You must really want it for the trip to feel worth it.
After three of my good friends and I kept circling back to the Falklands in our discussions of ideal penguin photography settings, we decided to take the plunge and, with the help of another photographer friend of mine who’d made the trip twice we began planning. In my years of international travel for wildlife photography, I’ve learned that while some elements are identical across all such trips, each one will present a unique set of challenges to prepare for. This trip had two such challenges, the first of which was that our original plans had us leaving for the Falklands in December, 2020. Needless to say, that did not end up unfolding as planned. Among its other devastating effects, COVID-19 shuttered the Falklands for two years, forcing us to reschedule to the next available opportunity once the pandemic began to subside. Our group being split between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and with flights, hotels, and domestic travel to book, it took a full year of phone calls and zoom meetings to finally land on our new departure date.
The second challenge of this trip was the decision my comrades and I made to not bring our 600mm prime lenses. A bird photographer’s bread and butter, the 600mm is ideal for long-distance, minimally invasive shots with clear, isolated backgrounds. My friends and I are all Canon shooters and this would be the first time for all of us working without our beloved 600mms. I was unnerved at the thought of traveling to another country with the sole purpose of photographing birds without such an important tool, but as it turned out we really did not need a 600mm lens.
On November 29, 2023, I began the three-day trek to the Falkland Islands. Our group all flew individually to Atlanta and met there that afternoon before taking the same eight-hour Delta flight to Santiago, Chile for a one-day, one-night layover at the only hotel on the airport grounds, a Holiday Inn. Which was a nice hotel and made it easy to fly out the next day for the second day of our travels.
The next morning saw us take another flight to Punta Arenas, a small, charming city so far to the south that it’s closer to Antarctica than to Chile’s capital and which serves as the steppingstone for travelers going to the Falklands. We spent a day there exploring the lovely shoreline, spotting some new life birds, and enjoying a particularly good coffee shop just around the corner from our hotel. The next day, we flew out of Punta Arenas to the Falkland Islands arriving at the military base which is how you enter and exit the Falklands. From there we flew to the privately-owned Saunders Island, the fourth largest of the Falklands and home of four nesting species of Penguins.
Saunders has two places for photographers to stay: the Neck Isthmus which has a rudimentary but functional shack and the Rookery on the east of the island. We chose to stay on the Neck for the first few nights, December 2nd-4th, and were treated to the most primitive housing we experienced during our entire trip. Nevertheless, it had a full kitchen with an open area to eat meals, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. Perfectly fine for the group of guys I traveled with. It should be noted, however, that this was one of the windiest areas I’ve ever been, a fact I simply cannot stress enough. Having traveled to Iceland twice for multi-week adventures, I thought I’d experienced the most aggressive winds on Earth, but the Falklands raised the bar to an entirely new level. The first day it howled and shook the shack all night long. The high winds blew large amounts of sand across the beach where we were photographing penguins, forcing us to consider the safety of our equipment while trying to get the best pictures. That said, it’s still worth going and we had a fantastic time there.
Despite the high winds it was worth it though to see the incredible bird life found on Saunders Island including our first chance with King Penguins. The Neck is the only location we encountered four nesting penguin species in addition to the Black-Browed Albatross and others. Of the four species of penguins found at The Neck, my best penguins photos were of King and Gentoo but we also had opportunities to see and photograph Rockhopper and Magellanic Penguin as well as Brown Skua, Dolphin Gulls, Blackish Oystercatcher, Magellanic Oystercatcher, Ruddy-Headed Goose, Falkland Steamer Duck, and Striated Caracara just to name a few. One afternoon, we even saw several Peale’s Dolphins, which are apparently common in that area.
Without my trusty 600mm, I mostly used the new Canon 100-500mm lens with my Canon R3 for this trip. It was there that I realized that not bringing the 600mm was the right choice. The 100-500mm was perfect for the distance we were working with and we got incredible shots of all the birds we saw and photographed with it. During the entire trip, there were only two instances where I regretted not having my 600mm, but it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle to travel that far and leave it sitting in my camera at home was the correct decision.
We chose to go in December because that’s the time of year penguins congregate in the Falklands to breed, nest and raise their young. Not only did that provide opportunities to photograph young penguin chicks, but let us observe these wonderful birds in a social setting they feel very comfortable in. From what we saw, most of the Gentoo penguins had two babies which were always overseen and protected from the Brown Skuas. Of the four species of penguins we encountered, we noticed the Rockhoppers had almost no fear of humans and in many cases would walk directly towards us. The King and Gentoo were also unafraid, but didn’t wander as close. The Magellanic Penguins were the least approachable, though didn’t seem afraid of a human presence so near their nesting grounds. However Magellanic Penguins nest in burrows (like Burrowing Owls) the only penguin species we encounter that are not ground nesting.
After three days at The Neck and many hundreds of photos and videos, we would get picked up and driven to our second location on Saunders Island, The Rookery. I’ll cover our adventures there in Part II of my posts about my photography exploits on the Falkland Islands.
Check out my YouTube channel Exploring The Natural World for some of my penguin videos from this fantastic photo adventure to the Falkland Islands.
