Plog: Cape Adare … The World’s Largest Adélie Penguin Colony

Sunday, 1 February  2015 (Part III)
In the Ice — Ross Sea
Current Position: 71°12’ S / 170°20’ E

After visiting Borchgrevink’s Hut (post here) on Cape Adare, our landing was far from over.  We were at the world’s largest Adélie penguin colony, and we were going to walk amongst the thousands of penguins that remained ashore even though it was well past the breeding season and most of them had already dispersed to go foraging.

To and fro … to and fro the Adélies go along the penguin highway from their nests to the sea and back … again and again they go.

They were everywhere we looked; everywhere we walked.  They were coming and going in every direction, so it was impossible to maintain the 5-meter (15 feet) rule for keeping our distance from them.  They didn’t seem to care about us at all.  Though some of the younger birds that strayed into the landing zone were frightened by the helicopters, others seemed to care not one whit, going up to check out the choppers after they landed on the makeshift helipad.

Make way for the penguin … or so it seems.  the crewman is actually signaling the chopper that the helipad is clear (you can see the shadow of the helicopter by the pile of snow and ice).

As soon as the chopper lands, this curious guy approaches to check out the big yellow bird.

This was one of our most enjoyable penguin encounters.  No more words … let’s just enjoy some visuals.

South Polar Skuas mirrored on the pond.

The skua in the air didn’t much care that someone else had usurped its bathing spot.

The End(s)!

The only reason we didn’t mind leaving when our time was up was because we knew we’d be doing heli flightseeing before returning to the ship.

Get ready for some real WOW, WOW, WOW moments coming up in the next post.

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