The Dynamic Duo

A Gentoo at the scene of the crime

(Andrew) On our epic Antarctic journey we saw 7 species of penguin (in order of appearance): Gentoo, Chinstrap, Adelie, Emperor, Royal, King and Rockhopper. This will cover two of those seven: the Adelie and the Gentoo. These are the cutest, in some ways, of the bunch.

We saw Gentoo Penguins in Neko Harbor, the scene of Dad’s injury. They are definitely suspects. They were sliding and waddling inside their “penguin highways” with penguin dung smothered on the bottom of their feathery “sleds.” The rookeries there were the splash of brown in the pristine vista of the harbor. We saw them next on Macquarie Island, a sub-Antarctic island, where they would brighten up the dark, wet soil with their amazingly orange feet. Gentoos are adorable.

An Adelie mugshot

Second, the probable favorite of all people on our ship, were the Adelie Penguins. They were so cute that anyone would want to smuggle them back home. But of course we had to stay 5 meters away from them and they had to come to us if we wanted to see them up close. We witnessed their fabled habit of pebble giving at Torgelsen Island, an island next to the American Palmer Station. One of either gender would be sitting on the egg and the other would be looking around the nest, noticing a perfect stone and placing it on the nest, although no one knows the criteria the Adelie uses. At Cape Royds, the site of one of Ernest Shackleton’s shelters, we saw little Adelie chicks (or puffs of grey down) from far away. Also while sailing through ice, there would be little groups of them on the ice floes and when we would pass they would quickly run away and as soon as we were gone they would resume their normal lives. We said goodbye to them when leaving the ice and never saw another one.

I miss those little buggers already. Here’s a video that shows why: