Ross Road is a major route through Port Stanley that runs along the southern side of Stanley Harbour from the western end of the harbour towards Stanley airport in the east. Our hotel was on Ross Road, as was the SAERI office, the post office, administrative offices and many of the shops. It was an obvious place to start our birding and we had a couple of birding outings in both directions along the road from our centrally located hotel.
Our first birding session was to the west, passing Government House and eventually the race course, on which horse races have been held for over a century. You can hardly walk any distance in Stanley without coming across pairs of Upland Geese on the grassy areas and we encountered these distinctive birds as soon as we left Malvina House. The sexes can easily be distinguished as the male is white with a striped back and the female brown.
Similar to the male Upland Goose is the male Kelp Goose, although it is all white and lacks the striped back. On our walk we saw both the male and female Kelp Goose on the water’e edge as well as flying above the harbour.
Also around the harbour we saw Dolphin and Kelp Gulls, Magellanic Oystercatcher, Blackish Oystercatcher and the endemic Falkland Steamer Duck.
On the grass verge beside Ross Road we saw Austral Thrush and Dark-faced Ground-Tyrant, a bird we first saw from our hotel room soon after we checked in.
When we walked towards the east from out hotel we saw quite a few different bird species. On the steel structure of a jetty near the centre of town there were several Imperial Cormorants, while in the water a Magellanic Cormorant was fishing.
On the coastal path to the east of town we came across one of the most colourful birds of the Falkland Islands, the Long-tailed Meadowlark, which is also known as the Military Starling in the Falkland Islands because of the bright red breast of the male that resembles a military uniform.
In the harbour a new bird for the trip was the Yellow-billed Teal, while above we had a Turkey Vulture flying by.
