A mixed group of Gentoos and Chinstraps heads out to feed.
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A mixed group of Gentoos and Chinstraps heads out to feed.
The much less common white morph of the Southern Giant-Petrel seems to be more frequent in the southern, more ice-bound part of their range -- at least, we didn't see any further north, but saw several here.
So many of my Chinstrap photos had birds with their eyes closed. Now I know why: according to Wikipedia, Chinstrap penguins microsleep over 10,000 times a day and accomplish this in 4-second bouts of sleep. The penguins accumulate over 11 hours of sleep for each hemisphere daily.
The much less common white morph of the Southern Giant-Petrel seems to be more frequent in the southern, more ice-bound part of their range -- at least, we didn't see any further north, but saw several here.
The clean(er) ones are returning from the sea; the dirty ones are headed out after a childcare stint. Suffice it to say that penguin colonies are not clean places.
This viridian carpet was unexpected amid the harsh, black-and-white grandeur of Antarctica. It is an alga, Prasiola crispa. ID from www.ats.aq/devAS/Ats/Guideline/d84cdccc-6a2a-4fc2-81f4-84... and
www.westarctica.wiki/index.php?title=Prasiola_crispa&....
Flying above nesting grounds; nests are hidden in the crevices between boulders on the rocky slopes.
Perhaps a greeting between two parents at shift change. I say "perhaps" because they both look pretty soiled, which isn't consistent with one of them just having come from the ocean.
This Chinstrap, returning from a feeding trip at sea, is carrying a tiny little water-rounded pebble from the beach all the way up to its nest (probably ~100 m -- not very far, as Chinstrap nesting sites go). At this rate, that nest is going to take an awfully long time to build! But presumably it knows what it's doing -- it is, after all, a professional bird. I'm guessing most of the pebbles they bring are bigger. And most of what we saw making up the nests were jagged, locally available stones.
One of only two vascular plants native to Antarctica.
With a couple of Chinstraps coming and going from their own colony higher up.