Lost

The other day, we received a box from the South Pole some 850 nautical miles south of here.  This in itself was quite normal.  As the main resupply and transit center for the South Pole station, we receive loads of boxes for and from the Pole, but this one was different; it contained a dead bird. 

The bird was identified as a snow petrel; one of only two types of birds we see on this side of the continent - and only spotted very rarely.


Snow Petrel


It is extremely unusual for birds to fly as far south as the South Pole as they mainly feed on krill, which is only found in open water.  Needless to say, there isn't any open water between here and the Pole so one doesn't usually see birds beyond the Trans-Antarctic Mountain range that separates the coastal region of Antarctica from the polar plateau on which the South Pole sits.

For some reason, this bird (not the one in the photo - that one is definitely alive) made its way over more than 800 miles of snow, ice and mountains to arrive at the South Pole and die.  I wonder what had malfunctioned in its brain or what it thought it would find further south. Perhaps it was programmed like me - too stubborn to turn back once it made the decision to fly south?