Locomotoring

This is my first friendly chinstrap. I have decided to call him Doreo, derived from a dark oreo. Perhaps he fancies himself as a Mateo, but what he doesn’t know, won’t hurt him. He was curious and came within a few feet. I am assuming Doreo was a he because the colony here had chicks and the mums were all fussing over their chicks. This lot are distinctive with that strap under their proud chins. I wonder what he thought of me, swaddled in an orange parka, looking like a larger and less elegant version of himself. 

The chinstraps are a talkative lot. I found myself waiting for over an hour for the humans to stop talking, so I could record the penguins. In the end, I had to cobble together from over 20 separate recordings to eliminate the human noises. While waiting, I got the opportunity to watch them closely. They groom. They squawk. They do some ballistic pooping, including the chicks. Later I learnt that they have specialized physiology that allows them to poop several feet away from their nests (link). They seem to ponder a lot. Later I learnt that they can micronap 10000 times a day (link). I had thought more stones more better, progeny survival being correlated with size of their stone nests. What I saw was preference for specific stones. Either they were just killing time, or like me, they did like the looks of one stone over other. I saw a lot of pink poop. Later I learned that their poop, called guano, colored pink due to a krill diet, is visible from space (link). I learned more about unregulated krill fishery (link) and took the vow again to never eat farmed fish (hello, plant based diet, I come to you in this new year!).

The above pictures are on the half moon island on the south shetlands group of islands. If you look at the map of Antarctica, Half Moon will appear as a dot. We had landed on the island, the afternoon of the 31rst. We were all anxious to get off the ship and stretch our legs, after two days of feeling unsteady during the Drake passage journey. These are some of the most northern parts of Antarctica peninsula and perhaps a smidgen warmer, warm enough for the ice to melt sooner than the continent and for the penguins to lay their eggs. It was still early summer in Antarctica and this was the only landing where we would see the chicks.

The following pictures are from Hydruga rocks, a group of rocks lying east of Two Hummock Island, in the Palmer Archipelago.

Since we were north of the Antarctica circle, we saw the gentoos and chinstraps who are most adapted to the warmth and will likely survive the warming Antartica. The Adélie are the natives, the Antarctica “mainland” penguins. The heating continent has revealed mummified Adélie penguins that go back over 5000 years (link). We could only spot one of them this trip. As for others in the species, we didn’t spot any.