Penguins!

After we finished cleaning up the lab, I decided to take the 10-minute walk down to Hut Point to see if there were any penguins hanging out. As I looked over the ridge down to the sea ice, there was a group of three of them!

These penguins are called Adélie Penguins, which are pretty small penguins only about 2 feet tall.

Soon after I got there, they started moving. They do waddle some but they love to slide along on their belly! They ended up coming closer to me and hanging out on a little peninsula of sea ice right next to the cliff I was standing on. They didn't seem to notice me at all and were quite content lying there.

Three Adélies out sunbathing at 11:30 at night!

A wider view of where they were at

As I was watching, one of them got up, jumped into the water and disappeared. The other two just lay there, sunbathing. A minute later, the missing penguin returned! He shot straight out of the water and landed on the ice! I snapped a picture right as he was landing.

Landing on the sea ice

After watching them for a while longer, I decided to head back to the lab to get the other guys. Plus, it was very cold and windy out there on the exposed rocky peninsula of Hut Point (the current wind chill makes the temperature around 8 degrees Fahrenheit right now).

I was worried that they would disappear before we got back. However, as we were walking out to the point, one of the guys (an avid birder) looks through his binoculars out in a different direction and says that there is another one! Apparently, the penguin saw us too because he started sliding on his belly as fast as he could toward us. These penguins are extremely curious! He was probably also wondering why anyone would be crazy enough to be outside under the conditions....

A curious penguin approaches his human onlookers

Anyway, the four of us just stood there and watched him approach. He stopped for a minute once he reached the edge of the sea ice. There was a small ridge there where the sea ice transitions to snow pack.

Searching for a path to visit the humans

Then, he found a smooth hill to climb over the snow drift and he kept coming toward us! He stopped when he was probably 10 feet away!

An amazing, close-up view of the penguin. Photo courtesy of our resident photographer and birder Martijn Vandegehuchte

Soon enough, he was bored with us so he turned around and took off!

After that, we headed to the other side of Hut Point and the other three penguins were still in the same exact spot I last saw them in. They seemed to be slightly more boring after our experience with the curious one!

The 'curious' penguin ended up coming down near the crack in the sea ice once we were up on the cliff

Anyway, I am excited that I finally got to see penguins. I was hoping that I would be able to so I kept going out to Hut Point to see if any showed up. I saw their tracks on multiple visits but this was the first time I saw anything!

Since I'm sure this post has already made Uncle Neil really jealous, I'll add another bird picture. This is a skua (I believe it is a South Polar Skua). Around Mactown, they can be very clever scavengers, foraging for food in the various waste bins around town.

A skua next to the same crack I eventually saw penguins at

Anyway, excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes as it is after 2 AM now! Unfortunately, I also just found out from the flight information page on our local McMurdo Intranet that my flight was cancelled. I don't know when I'll be able to leave but it looks like I can sleep in tomorrow.