Emperor Penguins
December 4, 2008
I will never forget this day!
We visited an Emperor Penguin nesting area. With iceaxes and crampons, Michelle, Kirsten and I trekked a couple miles over sea ice, snowfields, and scree slopes to reach the colony, which is tucked into a sheltered cove in the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. We counted how many Emperor Penguin chicks were present and took some photos for a census.
If you’ve ever watched “Happy Feet” or “March of the Penguins”, you’re familiar with Emperors. Few people ever see them firsthand, however, and fewer still experience a colony. Emperors incubate their eggs during the Antarctic winter (incredibly enough), so, now, in late spring, their chicks are as big as the adults and stand in fluffy groups on the ice. Soon, they will all head out to sea.
Emperor Penguins figure so prominently in popular media that they seem like a movie set in real life. The adults, black-and-white with splashes of orange, chest-high, are very deliberate, slow-moving creatures, unhurried in the face of Antarctic conditions. Most of them were out on feeding trips, so the colony was predominantly chicks: black and gray, fluffy in a warm coat of down, waiting around for their parents to return with food. Smaller Adelie Penguins also crisscrossed the area, on journeys of their own, and a couple Weddell Seals lounged next to holes in the ice.
With walls of the ice shelf rising sheer on one side, snow-covered mountains of Ross Island on the other, and alien-looking Emperor Penguins bunched all around, the scene was prehistoric and timeless. If you didn’t have a watch, you couldn’t be sure if you existed in this millennium, or the one before, or the one before that. Things haven’t changed too much for the Emperors in a long, long time.
Noah With Adelie Penguins
Two Emperor Penguin Adults
Emperor Penguin Colony
Emperor Penguin And Chick
Portrait Of An Emperor
Emperor And Chicks
Adelie Penguins On A Snow Cornice
Weddell Seal
7 Responses to 'Emperor Penguins'
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Greetings from the other polar region. Ever since reading Cherry-Gerard’s Worst Journey in the World, this Emperor Penguin Colony has been a place where I’ve longed to stand. Thanks for sharing this. Love the blog.
Clare
5 Dec 08 at 8:20 am
This just gets better and better.
ZHL
5 Dec 08 at 12:41 pm
JEALOUS! What an awesome experience you’re having Noah.
Leigh Johnson
5 Dec 08 at 2:54 pm
“midnight creeps so slowly, into hearts of those, who need more than they get. Day light deals a bad hand, to a penguin, who has laid too many bets.”
fluffy cloud
5 Dec 08 at 3:11 pm
wow Noah, I’m so glad you sent out the link! This is an amazing/ insane trip. Reading the blogs while I sit by the wood stove at home
Good luck down south!
Christa
5 Dec 08 at 4:04 pm
Hi Noah,
We’ve never met, but my parents (Pat and Joan Gallagher) sent me your blog link. I check it periodically and think it’s amazing you are taking part in your very own Nature special!
A friend of a friend of mine is also in Antarctica right now…I wonder if you every cross paths with other researchers on the continent? You never know how small of a world it may be…Here is an article on what he’s doing and it has a link to his blog: http://oregonstate.edu/about/mentors/ed-brook-and-logan-mitchell
Keep taking all those great photos!
Erin
Erin Gallagher
5 Dec 08 at 6:04 pm
okay, this is your latest post.
Anyway, these look amazing!
Andrew
6 Dec 08 at 5:03 am