Gentoos, Gentoos, Chinstraps and THE EMPEROR

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Penguins. What is there to say about them? They are cute and they are fluffy and they swim and according Warner Brothers they sing and dance. Now as much as I enjoyed Happy Feet that's not quite what they are all about. I think one word can sum them up. And that word is "guano". As soon as you approach a colony you smell it. It's rank like rotten fish and half the time they look like they've been doing their best to get as much of it on themselves as is penguinly possible. Then they don't look so cute. And I definitely wouldn't want to pick one up and take it home.

But they DO have their cute sides. if they've just been swimming and haven't been near the guano yet they are clean. And they've got this amazing ability to pop out of the water as they are swimming so they look like they are flying. They slide down snow slopes on their stomachs. They overbalance. And preen. And walk along their little penguin highways. These are compacted snow pathways caused by them walking the same paths so much. Often you'll just see a little head scurrying along above the snow.

And of course we all became penguin species experts (seal species too). We saw one full colony of Chinstraps - they have a line along the chin. We saw several random Adelies - they have a white eye patch. And the number one variety of penguin we saw was the gentoos. They are the kind with a white strip above their eye and they were everywhere. And like a five year old with a new toy we got bored of them quickly. We longed for something more exciting and exotic. We wanted more Adelies, we wanted more Chinstraps, we wanted some Macaronis (yellow feathers on their head - put a feather in his hat and called it macaroni). But what we didn't expect and didn't dare hope for was an Emperor!

But that's what we got! On one of the landings that I decided to ditch the kayaking (thankfully!) we were coming back from a hike and looking for a good place to slide down the slope on our stomachs like penguins (the reason I skipped the kayaking) and we were told that there was an adolescent penguin around and how to find it. Now this is very rare for where we were. Emperors like the south. like way down south. They are the only species that doesn't make a nest but rather carries their egg on their feel and they like to do that deep on the continent where we (as tourists) aren't ever going to see them. So this was a real treat. So Kevin the bird man didn't let us go too close to it and it didn't really put on much of a show, but we were all thrilled to have seen one.

To give you an idea of how unusual it was I'll tell you this interesting little fact: Kevin, our bird nerd, had never seen an Emperor before either.

And then our Emperor did some so typically penguin like that we just had to laugh. It lifted it's tail and it pooped. And again. Penguins are all about one thing: GUANO!

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Photos

Go clean yourself up
I don't seem to have many photos of the guano penguins. maybe cos they weren't as cute as the rest.

Me doing a head stand.
About 5 minutes before we heard abou the emperor

Not a Penguin
In fact it's Weddell seal.