St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia
South Georgia is a wildlife paradise in the Southern Ocean. In our few days here we have seen much of it: majestic wandering albatross sitting patiently on their nests, and tiny South Georgia pipits flitting about the tussocks; graceful light-mantled sooty albatrosses soaring along the cliffs; hordes of Antarctic fur seals, the pups dashing at our heels in never-ending games of bluff; and enormous elephant seals lying on the beach in thigmotactic heaps, rising occasionally to resolve a neighborly dispute and then, the matter amicably resolved, returning to the task of moulting the outer layer of their skin and fur.
But for most of us the signature species of South Georgia, the image that will come to our minds as we reflect back on these days, is the king penguin – penguins swirling around our Zodiacs in Right Whale Bay; forming a greeting party on the beach at Salisbury Plain; examining the contents of the life-jacket bag; turning their heads, the better to see and ponder the strange invaders. Most of all, it is the sheer numbers of penguins in the breeding colonies – perhaps 150,000 breeding pairs here at St. Andrews Bay. The extended and asynchronous breeding cycle of king penguins allows us to see birds in all stages of reproduction. We saw adults necking in a tender courtship ritual, and others, their courtship successful, now standing with a single egg on their feet covered with a flap of skin. Some had a young chick only days from the egg, and others tended chicks now too large to fit under the protective flap (although they certainly tried.) And then there were the “oakum boys” in their furry brown suits, nearly the size of their parents and demanding all of the efforts of two adults to satisfy their demand for food. In the photo above the process of penguin reproduction nears completion. The young penguin still pursues its parent (at least, it hopes that this is its parent) with a high-pitched call for food; but it is taking on its juvenile plumage of sleek, overlapping feathers that will provide protection from the cold water of the Southern Ocean as it leaves the colony and sets out to feed for itself.
South Georgia is a wildlife paradise in the Southern Ocean. In our few days here we have seen much of it: majestic wandering albatross sitting patiently on their nests, and tiny South Georgia pipits flitting about the tussocks; graceful light-mantled sooty albatrosses soaring along the cliffs; hordes of Antarctic fur seals, the pups dashing at our heels in never-ending games of bluff; and enormous elephant seals lying on the beach in thigmotactic heaps, rising occasionally to resolve a neighborly dispute and then, the matter amicably resolved, returning to the task of moulting the outer layer of their skin and fur.
But for most of us the signature species of South Georgia, the image that will come to our minds as we reflect back on these days, is the king penguin – penguins swirling around our Zodiacs in Right Whale Bay; forming a greeting party on the beach at Salisbury Plain; examining the contents of the life-jacket bag; turning their heads, the better to see and ponder the strange invaders. Most of all, it is the sheer numbers of penguins in the breeding colonies – perhaps 150,000 breeding pairs here at St. Andrews Bay. The extended and asynchronous breeding cycle of king penguins allows us to see birds in all stages of reproduction. We saw adults necking in a tender courtship ritual, and others, their courtship successful, now standing with a single egg on their feet covered with a flap of skin. Some had a young chick only days from the egg, and others tended chicks now too large to fit under the protective flap (although they certainly tried.) And then there were the “oakum boys” in their furry brown suits, nearly the size of their parents and demanding all of the efforts of two adults to satisfy their demand for food. In the photo above the process of penguin reproduction nears completion. The young penguin still pursues its parent (at least, it hopes that this is its parent) with a high-pitched call for food; but it is taking on its juvenile plumage of sleek, overlapping feathers that will provide protection from the cold water of the Southern Ocean as it leaves the colony and sets out to feed for itself.
