Penguins

Penguins - What can be said about Penguins. Everyone seems to love them and so do I and over the years beginning in 2000 we have been fortunate enough to travel there four times, three times from Argentina down to the Antarctic Peninsula sometimes making landings on intermediate islands and on to South Georgia Island and then the Falkland Islands and once to the Ross Sea from Australia stopping at multiple intermediate islands, some controlled by Australia and some by New Zealand. The Southern Ocean (now officially an Ocean) is the wildest wickedest Ocean in the world, but is home to foraging whales of many species, albatrosses, giant petrels, seals, and many of the seventeen or so species of penguins only two of which, Adelie and Emperor are truly ice species. While the Adelies live around ice they nest on open areas building rock nests along with other species that live along the ice edges, in totally ice free areas or on the intermediate islands. Only the Emperor Penguins (as we all know from nature show and movies) actually live and raise their chicks on ice. We have been able on many of these trips to visit nesting sites ( now you have to stay five meters away and can’t put anything on the ground, but before these newer restrictive rules went into effect we could just sit at the edge of a colony of penguins and watch and wait as they went about their business) and been able to observe eggs, tiny chicks, eggs on feet, as well as what I can only call penguins scapes as tens of thousands of birds cover the landscape before us. While penguins stink, it’s a small price to pay for the experience.