Adélie Penguins
Pygoscelis adeliae

1/ Adélie penguins live further south than any other type. Why are these on the ice?.

6/ Why is this penguin showing off?

10/ Is this a penguin? Wait until his father gets home!

Adélie penguin story

Adélies winter on the pack ice where the air temperature is higher than on land and where they can find cracks in the ice to fish through. In October, they begin to move south to their breeding grounds, the males arriving first to establish territories and nest spaces with the females arriving shortly afterwards.

This is one of the first males arriving back in the spring before the remainder of the sea-ice has broken away.

These Adélies have a problem, they went out fishing at high tide and now. some hours later have returned. In the meantime the tide has gone out.  

Still attached to the land is the "ice-foot" an ice step left behind as the tide rises and falls in the winter months to which the floating sea ice is loosely attached. When the sea ice breaks out, the ice-foot is left behind for a period of days to weeks before rising temperatures and the waves cause this to break off too.  

What was a short hop down for the penguins is now a step too high for them. I spent a couple of hours one afternoon watching and following an ever increasing number of penguins as they came back from their fishing trip. They wandered up and down the shore-line trying to find somewhere to get up, but to no avail. Eventually, the tide came back in and so they floated back up to the right level and were able to get back to their nests. The ice-foot broke off completely a few days later in a mild storm.

More of the Adélies stuck at low tide.  

The ice-foot is more evident in this picture and the number of penguins is building up, by the time the tide was rising enough to float the grounded "bergy bits" that the birds are standing on, there were about 50 or so penguins standing around before they could get back up.       

This proved a difficult subject to capture on film.  

A high contrast subject in bright light against a high contrast background poses an extreme problem in terms of exposure. The answer in this as in many other similar cases was to take an exposure reading off a neutral mid grey subject, set the camera for this and ignore anything the light meter told you when pointing at the real subject. After much experimentation, the ideal grey subject for metering turned out to be the pale grey moleskin  trousers that I wore (moleskin is a kind of thick warm cotton fabric, it's not really made from the skin or kin of moles). A very happy coincidence.

What a handsome fellow! This male Adélie is a bit late compared to the others around him who have in the main already paired and nested.  

The males arrive at the breeding grounds first, find a good spot and then go through this display with much raucous calling and flipper waving to attract a suitably impressed female. (A similar ritual is re-enacted on Friday and Saturday evenings at bars and clubs the world over)

This shot also shows the half-feathered beak characteristic of Adélie and how stocky and powerful they are despite their diminutive stature.

Tobogganing Adelie penguins (and a lone chinstrap in the fore-ground). All types of penguin that come across snow and ice can and will toboggan in this manner. It is a very efficient and rapid way of moving when the conditions are right - soft snow, but where the penguin only sinks a little way into it, needing less energy than walking the same distance. The penguin lays on it's front and pushes its way forwards using its feet, the flippers are used for balance or sometimes as oars to help forwards movement. A considerable speed can be reached for short distances in this way, enough to out pace a running man.

Antarctic penguins run a constant risk when entering or leaving the water from the almost ever-present danger of their main predator, the leopard seal. Leopard seals tend not to chase penguins in open sea, but hang around the places where they jump into the sea from their nesting areas, or where they leave the sea again as this is gives much more productive hunting.

This gives the penguins a problem when going into the sea, they have to enter it to go fishing and to get places, but being the first one in means that they're first in line for any potential leopard seals. Hanging back isn't any better though as they may get left behind and end up jumping in on their own. What happens therefore is that they gather at the edge of the water becoming quite animated and jostling for position until one near to the edge gets pushed or jumps in - that's the signal for the rest, as the odds of survival are far greater when you're part of a large group, they then all dive in in rapid succession.

These penguins were walking, waddling and tobogganing up and down the area beneath the ice foot looking somewhere to get out. So I thought I'd play a little trick, squat down out of view and wait for them to turn the corner - no I didn't jump up and shout "surprise!", but the comic effect of the first bird's reaction to realising he was coming towards me at high speed is evident.

Fortunately I managed to get this shot off and capture the moment before moving sea-wards (to the left) and allowing their progress to continue, they were back again a few minutes later though as all they could really do was wait for the tide to come in and raise them up to the right level.

When the parents go off to sea to catch fish for the chicks, the chicks have little to do other than stand around and try not to get into trouble. 

This doesn't always work in the way that it is supposed to, rather like human children, penguin chicks fall over sometimes and get a bit dirty!

Penguin
 Photobook by Frans Lanting, Christine K. Eckstrom
   USA | UK

2013 Penguin Calendars