Our penguin colony excursion was amazing, if eye-watering. We could smell it from the Zodiac long before we landed. Once we arrived on shore, you simply had to try to block it out of your mind, which wasn't always easy. Happily, the sounds and activities all around made for compelling distractions. Parent and chick below. I wouldn't say "mother and chick" because the mother and father share responsibilities for the chick. They alternate minding the chick and going for food.
This is how the colony looked as we approached. The hard blue ice of the glacier, exposed by wind, fractures, and melting, can be seen in the back. The middle ground is snow with red and yellow algae growing in it, while the penguins are perched mainly on the black bedrock in the foreground.
Three families of penguins, with the left parent feeding the juvenile by regurgitation.
Jennifer got this great shot with her phone.
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Whenever they walk on land, they look like they can barely keep their balance, but I saw them do some pretty tough maneuvers jumping from rock to rock. Didn't see any fall over.
The uneven feathers are a sign of molting, when they get new feathers. Penguin molting is called "catastrophic molting" because it happens all over the whole body at once, which is unusual.
Two parent-child pairs in this one. I like how the one on the right has a rock to add to his or her nest. Also, I love that mountain in the back. No rock is visible. It completely lost the battle with snow and ice.
Most of the chicks were nearly full size, as we were there in late Antarctic summer, meaning the chicks hatched months ago.
It was gray and cold, with a tiny bit of rain, during our visit to this Gentoo penguin colony. Gentoos have a red beak and a white mark on the head behind the eyes. Watching all these penguins in the cold rain made me question my concept of comfort. This was some of the best weather they see all year: a bit of sunlight and relatively warm temperatures. In fact, since their blubber keeps them perfectly comfortable in near-freezing water, they may think of 35 degrees Fahrenheit as too damned hot.
Penguin Rock Band - with the vocalist up front, the awkward adolescent molting, the lazy guy lying down, and the thoughtful one staring at the sea in back.
Sometimes they seemed to get a burst of energy and just start flapping their wings and wagging their tail wildly. This one's tail is wagging so fast it's just a blur.
At first I didn't like the red, green, and yellow algae spoiling the perfect blue of the ice, but then I started to like the variety of color it provides. Some might accuse me of thinking in terms of what it looks like in photos before anything else.
The glacier face may appear close in this photo, but is about a mile away.
I feared this guy would slip or trip, but he knew what he was doing. He even hopped up onto a higher rock and one point. Not bad.
Can't resist that insane deep glacier ice. We're seeing a cross section of the compacted hard ice that's usually buried under snow.
Here's a short video from Jennifer of penguins on a "penguin highway." It's sort of like deer trails. It's easier to walk on packed snow, so after a few go the same way, the rest continue using the same path, until it gets packed into a groove that becomes a trail used by the whole colony.
A couple of short videos of penguins porpoising. I'm no videographer yet. Anyway, it's tough to figure out where they're going to surface next!
That's all the penguins for this post, but a couple more fun things from that day. These are from later the same evening. We saw whales on a regular basis. I wonder what these waters would have looked like back in the late 1800's, when there were still millions of whales.
A couple of short videos of whales diving.
Something we chose NOT to do - the Polar Plunge - see the guy in midair? We were amazed at how many people chose to do it. They had a tether on, plus two guides in a Zodiac ready for rescue. In the closer Zodiac, a ship photographer in an orange life vest was taking photos.
In this photo, guides were out practicing cold water rescues when a whale passed by. There were several whales working this bay that night. This provides a hint of the relative sizes of the whale, the people, and the glacier behind. If you're looking at this on a phone, you'll probably need to zoom in.
That's it for the first penguin post!
Absolutely amazing! What spectacular pics! Who knew there were penguin highways? Thank you so much for the tour of Antarctica. I wanna go so badly......
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