Adelie Penguins
Antarctica is still locked in ice, and surrounded by a frozen ocean. Nonetheless, there are signs of spring. Adelie penguins are arriving - just the males. They’ve spent five months at sea, where it’s warmer than it is on land and now they’re in a hurry, for spring will be short.
They have travelled 6,000 miles across the ocean, since leaving their colony last year, and now they’re returning to breed. They cannot lay their eggs on ice, for they would freeze, so they have to come inland, where there is bare rock.
Over the coming months, the few parts of Antarctica that are ice-free will be the stage on which five million Adelie Penguins will build their nests.
To construct one, they need pebbles, and without a good-looking nest, a male will be unable to attract a female, when they at last arrive. An impressive property demonstrates your worth as a mate.
It takes stones of all shapes and sizes to build a decent nest, and finding ones that are just right is not easy. So some penguins turn to a life of crime.
Unaware of the presence of the culprit. The robbed penguin continues tending his nest.
The thief’s nest is coming along nicely, probably because he keeps a particularly sharp lookout for robbers - after all, it takes one to know one.
Tortuous Road to Adelie Penguins Mating
It’s still cold, but the early season sun does lift the temperature by a few degrees. That, however, can have unexpected, even dangerous consequence.
The sea is heating faster than the land, pulling cold air from the middle of the continent towards the coast. These katabatic winds are stronger than any hurricane. They are the coldest and the most ferocious winds on the planet.
The storms catch many new arrivals by surprise, and are the reason that the spring here is, in fact, the deadliest season. Here, the early birds take a great risk. Some years, entire colonies are lost, buried beneath the snow.
The survivors of this storm must hope that the females prove to be worth the wait when they finally decide to turn up.
But the Adelie penguin’s activities are finally warming up. The males have now finished their nests, by fair means or foul. And the females are finally returning, just as the weather is improving. Now their courtship can begin. The eggs are laid and the females leave the job of incubating them to the males, while they go fishing out on the fragmenting sea ice.
A new generation of Adelie penguins steps forth into the short Antarctic spring to be nurtured by industrious parents who take great risks to give their young a head start. They’ll need to grow fast if they are to fledge and leave before the freeze sets in again. It’s a battle they will win or lose over the approaching summer.
David Attenborough began this series with an introduction to The Frozen Planet.
Footnote on Adélie Penguins
I note from some research that my spelling of Adelie may be incorrect. Perhaps Adélie is more precise, note the accented “e”.
External Links
Adelie Penguin - Wikipedia Page
Further Reading
The Penguins are Coming! Harper and Row
National Geographic Readers: Hello, Penguin! (Pre-Reader)
Adelie Penguin by Luvero
The Adelie Penguin by David Ainley
