Adélie Penguins - Pygoscelis adeliae
The most southerly of Antarctic breeding penguins along with the Emperor, Found on the Antarctic continent and sub-Antarctic islands.
Adélie Penguin Basics
Average Weight: 5kg - 11lb - feels more than this though when you've upset one and it's ran up and attacked you by hanging off your thigh with its beak, the penguin version of a pair of pliers attached to your leg.
Average Height: 70cm - 27.5inches
Breeding Season: November - February - Adélie penguin colonies are very loud, raucous, busy and smelly affairs. The call of an Adélie is as musical and gentle as a braying jackass and the whole colony is awash with guano (posh word for bird poop). When I was in Antarctica one thing I did was help with long-term surveys which entailed walking through the colony (terribly frowned upon these days). Each nest is just over two pecking distances apart so the penguins can't reach each other. Of course walking through the middle meant that you were in range of everyone. I used to worry a lot about falling over in a penguin colony, covered from head to toe in guano and pecked mercilessly.
Reproduction: Large colonies of up to half a million birds. Nests are lined with pebbles, and slightly higher than the surrounding land so that if the temperature rises and the snow melts, the nest is not flooded. The males arrive first on the nesting site at the beginning of the season and start the nest, then both partners work on the nest. Usually two eggs are laid, rarely three. Incubation of the first egg is 35 - 37 days, and the second chick is a few days behind the first. Male and female parent share egg and chick duty. Chicks are fed regurgitated krill (yum!) The chicks become independent at about two months old.
Estimated world population: - 5 million, increasing.
Feeding: Eat mainly krill, also fish, amphipods and squid in smaller quantities in shallow dives of 20m or less.
Conservation status: Near threatened.
Distribution: Circumpolar, tend to be found within the pack ice.
Oldest Rookery - At least 6,335 years old. The places where penguins nest together are called rookeries. These are started and later abandoned for reasons that are not entirely clear. Archaeological type studies have found that these rookeries are often continually used for many hundreds of years, even thousands. The oldest so far found has been used every year since well before 4 000 BC.
Adélie penguins are scared of: Leopard seals - main predators of adult birds, and Skuas - prey on eggs and chicks on land. They are not scared of the "Ice Man", "The Thing" or falling over on their backs and not being able to get up again - the first Antarctic "Urban Myth".
Adélie penguins live further south than any other type. Why is this one on the ice?.
There are more Adélie penguins than any other penguin species. They live in the deep south and so frequently have to cross many kilometres of winter sea-ice still bound to the continent or islands to reach land in the spring where they can build their nests.
Sometimes they have to travel as much as 100 kilometres (60 miles), though usually 20-40 is more usual. A long walk nevertheless.
This guy here was an early arrival in spring at an Antarctic Island near the northern edge of the breeding range and only had about half a kilometer left to waddle and "toboggan".
Tobogganing is a way of getting around where there is smooth snow or ice. The penguin lies on its stomach and propels itself along using its feet, an efficient use of energy and one where the penguin can easily keep up with a running person.
When do Adélie penguins start to nest?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.
These are some of the first males arriving back in the spring before the remainder of the sea-ice has broken away, taking a rest here before continuing on their journey.
Why are these penguins hopping about on the ice?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.
How long were they stuck?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.
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.
Why is this penguin showing off?
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).
You can also see the half-feathered beak characteristic of Adélie penguins and how stocky and powerful they are despite their diminutive stature.
Like many penguin species, the male and females are physically almost completely identical and it is almost impossible to tell them apart by their appearnce, the behaviour at mating time however gives things away much more clearly.
Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) tobogganingTobogganing 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. It can be a fast sprint to get away quickly or a more leisurely equivalent of a slow-jog over a long time period.
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 around in the 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 a potential leopard seal attack. 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 which can confuse the leopard seal, they then all dive in in rapid succession.
Parent penguin and chicksLike many penguins, Adélies lay two eggs of which usually only one survives to fledge.
The parents take it in turns to incubate the eggs or go out to sea fishing and then later on when the eggs have hatched, they take it in turns to catch food for and feed the chicks or sit with the chicks on the nest. When the chicks are older and able to walk around and leave the nest, the parents will both go fishing together to supply the growing demand for food from the growing youngster/s.
The chicks left behind form loose collections of birds that stay close together in a crèche where they help offer some defence to each other from marauding skuas and also the weather when the wind blows and temperature drops, huddling together helps give them extra warmth and protection.
Is this a penguin?Wait until his father gets home!
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!