Penguinos

I've taken exactly zero pictures of penguins since I arrived at Palmer this year.  As a matter of fact, I've gone out of my way to avoid Torgersen Island altogether.  Years ago, I didn't understand a friend's reaction to penguins as "stinky, disgusting, and covered with shit."  But they're so cute and goofy I thought to myself.  Well, I suppose they're both, but once the novelty has worn off they're mostly stinky and covered with shit.  Still, I took a bunch of pictures last year that I meant to post and never quite got there, so here they are...

The birds and the bees:


The birders proffer a little wager each year called "Get Laid on Torgersen".  For a dollar, you get a day on the November calendar, and if the first egg appears on your day, you take the pot.  In early December they start to hatch.  This one had begun, and I hoped to see it finish, but apparently it needed a warm nap under mum's belly first:


A couple weeks later, and their little heads are popping out from beneath their parents' bellies.


Sometimes there are two:


Bet you didn't think a penguin could do this:


While Chris (aka C-Money, aka Coconuts) sat quietly taking pictures of the nesting adelies, his own gang of very curious gentoos waddled right up to have a look at him:


I guess I can't say that I'm completely over penguins.  I still have a good chuckle at them now and then; when they scurry up the road in town as the loader rounds the corner; when one finds itself on the pier and can't quite figure its way back to the water; when they misjudge a hop and flop over flapping; and I don't think I'll ever tire of them porpoising.  But going to Torgersen isn't what it used to be for me, unless the skuas are providing a good show.  And I definitely find myself routing for the predators.

The islands in general are losing that initial luster.  Though each unique, they're all just piles of rocks with a smattering of lychen and moss, and a splattering of guano.  I've found a few new things to do, but I won't talk about them here... yet.

I'm still excited by whale encounters.  Yesterday I went out with Kim on her circuitous sampling grid and saw more krill on the echo sounder than she has seen yet.  For five hours we motored back and forth in the boating area and beyond, in a large erratic swell that made it hard to even keep the boat straight (not to mention keep a meager lunch in my belly).  Several snow squalls pushed through, forcing us to navigate by GPS when the visibility was limited to only the ocean around us: an eerie feeling.  But we saw ten or more small pods of humpbacks feeding all around us.  I jumped several times when I heard the distinct sound of their exhale right next to me.  And for the first time, I saw them breaching.  Only a few times, and in the distance, but it was incredible and nearly unbelievable to see a creature of that size launch itself entirely into the air and come crashing down in a huge spray.  So, you know, it's not all bad.

But stepping back to that day last December, on the way home from Torgersen the sky had a bizarrely beautiful ceiling of mottled cloud:


Looking away from the sun, towards the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula:


Kim spied a solitary krill amongst the brash ice, and got so excited after she picked it up with an oar, that she fell over backwards into the boat:


Hard to imagine now, that a single krill would be so exciting, but there just weren't that many of them last year.