Photo album: "Adélie penguins come back"

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The vernal equinox (September 23rd in the southern hemisphere) is gone. Days are now longer than nights. At the beginning of October three days of tempest have made the pack ice, north of our island, disappear. It remains only some ice between our island, Rostand island and the continent. We are once again limited on our walking possibilities and we have to be very careful if we wish to cross over the remaining ice to go and see the emperor penguins. In the meantime other birds have arrived on the isles of Pointe Géologie archipelago (hence on Pétrels island): Adélie penguins, petrels, skuas…

After the tempest at beginning of October, the pack ice, north of our island, has disappeared.

Around mid-October Adélie penguin males have come back on Pétrels island and on the other islands of Pointe Géologie archipelago. They have to prepare their nest for when the females arrive, within about one month.

Since we have some maintenance work to do on the 73-metre antenna of the ionosphere sounder (secure the bolts of the ladder casing, exchange the lamp of the flashing light), we will take advantage of this opportunity to have a look around from the top of the antenna.

We are now at the beginning of November and we can see, southwards, there is no ice left between Carrel island and the continent.

Looking towards north, we have a view of the main part of Dumont d'Urville base, where are the laboratories, the technical service, meteorology and life facilities.

We can see, eastwards, the new building for people accommodation during summer campaigns and, behind, the old buildings .used during the first winter campaign on Pétrels island, in 1953, after fire destructed Port-Martin base situated farther east on the continent edge. These shelters called "Marret Base" accommodated seven people under the responsibility of Mario Marret. He wrote, later, a book narrating this campaign: "Sept hommes chez les pingouins".

Closer view eastwards: on the left, the garage of the first campaign; on the right, the fuel tanks and the gantry for unloading the boats; behind, "le pré" (the meadow - a slightly tilted roughly flat surface, south of the isle) and at the right side of the "Cervin" (small rock looking as the Matterhorn mountain, more visible on the previous photo) in front of the "Mont Rose", the building used to assemble the rockets during the scientific campaign, beginning of 1967.

Looking towards south-east, the west side of Rostand island and, behind, the place where stood the colony of emperor penguins. As the ice has become very thin, the penguins moved to the continent edge.

A closer view allows us to see the large number of Adelie penguins dwelling on Rostand island.

At the foot of the antenna, we perceive Adélie penguins looking like black dots.

The long focal lens helps us to a better view of the penguins sitting on their nest.

Let us go down the ladder to have a closer view of the penguins.

On the contrary to emperor penguins, Adélie penguins have a very acute sense of territory. Their nest is made of little pebbles which help them not to stay in contact with snow when there is some. Like for men, there are poor penguins (this one has few pebbles in its nest and it seems uneasy!).

And there are rich penguins (this other one has a lot of pebbles in its nest and it can sleep relaxed!). When a male penguin wish to court a female, it brings her a few stones as a present. There are also some attempts of stealing stones, which end in big fights. Adélie penguins are easily quarrellers, mind itself the penguin that approach too much another one's nest! They are also very noisy when they fight.

When I said, at the beginning, I was to live in a totally mineral world, it was not entirely true: it is possible to find, when summer is coming, in rare places, a kind of lichen hidden between the rocs.

But what is it on this piece of floating ice?

Using the long focal lens, we discover a Weddell seal dozing tranquilly. He has no longer, now, the problem of maintaining a hole in the ice and if there is not enough floating pieces of ice between the islands, it can go and sleep on anyone of these islands.

Go back

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