Birds which are penguins

Of the 5,000 or so pictures we took on this trip,10% were of penguins. I think another 10% were whales, 20% icebergs and the rest were waterfalls 🙂 ). We wanted to see penguins in the wild, and we did. Thousands and thousands of them.

These are Magellanic (or Jackass) penguins, at Magdalena Island, near Punta Arenas in Chile. Doug took these as I didn’t fancy a four hour return ferry boat ride for an hour of penguin watching after being recently seasick. I don’t think you need captions 🙂

The birds which are not penguins are Arctic South American terns.

But, I hear you say, penguins live on icebergs! Well, no they don’t, but they sure do like to hang around on them, at least in Antarctica

 

This is an Adelie penguin – we almost always saw these singly and on icebergs

But the ones we saw the most are the Gentoo penguins, easily distinguished from the Adelie by the orange beaks and feet, and the white flash over the eye

There are many ways to spot penguins. One can see them in the water

Or their tracks in the snow

But often the signs aren’t exactly subtle 🙂

We sailed past several very large colonies, I think all of Gentoos:

These are chinstrap penguins on Deception Island, though good luck if you can tell that from these shots

As you can see, we were not allowed to get close to the colonies, though there were people walking around them from a National Geographic cruise who had gone over on zodiacs (I strongly disapprove of this). So apart from these long distance shots of the colonies, we mostly saw wild penguins like this:

Until we went to Bluff Cove near Stanley on the Falkland Islands. Then we saw them like this

There were four groups of Gentoos, all kept from contact with the people by white ropes, with just a handful of King penguins at the very end of their breeding season, keeping to the edge of the biggest group

These two were keeping regally aloof on the beach 🙂

The chicks were so cute – their wings were made of silly putty, or so it looked like, so when they flapped them, it was more like waggling.

This adult shows the kids how to do it.

Hang on, who’s that interloper? It’s a young and presumably lost Magellanic penguin, hanging out with the big boys.

It was a blistering hot day by Stanley standards (20°C!!!!) so the penguins were all suffering heat stress, trying to cool off by resting or lying in their parent’s shade

Bluff Cove and Stanley were easily our favourite port destinations of the whole trip. Cracking cream teas on the beach too 🙂

As we sailed from Stanley, we saw penguins again, on the beach:

And one of our last sightings, as was Doug’s first, was of a Magellanic penguin

They really are adorable 🙂