"I spent several seasons working at a remote field camp in Antarctica…over 1000 km from the main station in McMurdo. Every once in a while, a Skua bird or Antarctic Tern would accidentally end up following one of the small planes (Twin Otter) out to our camp. Once there though, they’d basically be stranded with no way to get back to the coast. I’d get out of my tent some mornings and see a lonely Tern circling overhead, knowing it was a dead bird flying. It was quite creepy.

Along these lines, when birds (or seals) do die down there, it’s so cold and dry, that their bodies don’t decay either. They essentially mummify. Outside McMurdo at Scott’s Discovery Hut, there is still a perfectly preserved seal carcass from 1912 sitting by the entrance of the hut."

lakewoodhiker