Photo album: " The emperor penguins"

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The emperor penguins arrived around the end of March and they gathered between Rostand and Carrel islands and nunatak (*) of Bon Docteur. In this place well protected from winds, the pack ice can remain quite a long time. Couples formed and females laid their single egg in April and gave it, at once, to their male, then they departed towards open sea to find food. The male incubates the egg, keeping it on its feet, well protected by a fold of its abdomen skin. When the female come back, the chick is already hatched and the male, which has not eaten for three months has begun to nourish it. The female retrieves the chick on its feet and takes to feed it over and, at last, the male can begin its long march toward the open sea where it will be able to eat. When it arrived in March, it weighed forty kilograms, when it will be able to have food again, four months later, it will have lost half of its weight. 

(*) Nunatak is a term used in geology and in glaciology to define a mountain summit not covered with snow or ice which rises in the middle of a glacier or a surface covered with ice like the continental glaciers of Antarctic or Greenland. 
The nutanak is like an "island" in the glacier. 
The term derives from the Inuit language and has begun to be used around 1880. 
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia)

We are walking toward the emperor penguins' colony ("rookery"), situated at about one kilometre from Pétrels island.

From the summit of Rostand island we have a global view of the rookery.

The rookery, before the females left, amounted to about ten thousands penguins.

The just hatched chick, same as the egg during incubation, remains on its father's feet sheltered by a fold of its abdomen skin. If it fell on the ice, with an outside temperature of -25°C and a wind blowing often over 100 km/h, it would not survive for long.

A delicate operation, same as when the female gave the egg to the male, is when the male gives the chick to the female. The little one must stay the shortest possible time exposed to the cold. How was the couple able to recognise each other? It is something not well understood at this time, yet.

With the emperor chicks hatching, new actors are arriving: the Antarctic giant petrels. Their wings span over two metres. They nest on Pétrels island (to which they gave their name) and also on a few neighbouring isles.

The giant petrels are ready to attack the chick which would leave the adults' protection. They can also feed on an already dead chick, before it freezes, or on any other dead animal (seal, adult penguin).

Emperor penguins have no territory, on the contrary to other penguin species, and they accept to be very close to one another.

The chick, on the left, is asking its mother (or father?) food.

A parent, at the second line, is nourishing its chick, regurgitating food in its beak.

After the return of the females, parents come and go in turn, between the rookery and the open sea, to eat and then to nourish their chick which is growing up and needs more and more food.

The penguins stay always close enough to each other, in that manner the chicks are better protected from the giant petrels, and above all, if the wind gets stronger, they can gather in a tightly packed crowd ("huddle") for a better protection against cold and wind.

When the emperor penguins gather in a huddle, the temperature at the centre can exceed 30°C, even if the external temperature is less than -25°C and the wind speed is 200 km/h. Slowly the penguins at the centre of the huddle move towards the periphery and the ones at the periphery move towards the centre. Thus all the penguins succeed in regulating, in average, their environmental temperature.

The biologist has often to go and observe the penguins, take pictures and record their songs. However he never goes alone, he is always accompanied by another voluntary member of the expedition as a matter of prudence, especially when the weather is bad.

The chicks are growing up and shortly they will be able to stay outside without the thermal protection of their parent.

Even if, from time to time, the chicks go back to warm up on their parent's feet, they are now able to regulate their temperature alone.

Even if the chicks can stand alone on the ice, they never go far away from their parent.

As the weather is fine, this emperor penguin and its chick take advantage to take a walk a little farther from the colony.

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