Today started grey and early, shimmering gloom but the forecast was good. Patches of clearing, glimpsed and snatched away again, but leaving a little more behind at each clearing.
The Zodiac scrunched against the rock of Saddle Island; a strong swell but we scrabbled ashore on wet, slithery rocks. Climbed the steep tussac to the plateau and then we split off to the four winds of the island, high above the surging sea.
The sun breaks through: two wandering albatrosses gaze back, massively white, sitting patiently with oversize beaks. Giant petrels everywhere, squashed on young chicks, yelling protection. The ground is riddled with the holes of burrow-nesting petrels - white-chins, diving petrels, prions.
White-chinned petrels swoop, circling to their nests as the sun builds. The occasional clipped crack of icebergs breaking and the low roar of a big glacier calving pierces the brilliant stillness.
The seascape clears, straggling wisps of cloud linger against the brilliant blue of the sea studded with small bergs, the wet green of the tussac, the shiny majesty of a thousand rocky peaks, un-named, unclimbed, untouched. The rocky scree of our island for the day climbs steeply to end abruptly in a 600 foot plunge to the sea.
Our paradise of the perfect morning is broken by the finding of rat droppings. Then a skull; I hear rodent scurrying among the high tussac. Brought to South Georgia by people, rats are a serious pest here: they eat the burrow-nesting birds. And already, they have cleared out the pipits.
Our morning's idyll has found the beginnings of a nightmare. Our brief visit has made Saddle Island a top conservation priority: without a rat eradication programme the burrows will fall silent in ten, maybe 20 years. Thank goodness we've found this now, while there is still time to act.