25 Sep 18 Yesterday we looked at the hunter, today at the prey. Where we were on Antarctica the majority of penguins were Adeles. In fact, there were lots of them! Emperors and Kings, which are the ones most folks identify with, were not generally around although the Emperors were occasionally seen but I wasn't fortunate enough to be among those that did. But the Adeles I saw lots of, and they were always fun to be around. Another good title for them might be "The Inquisitive Ones" as they showed no fear of humans, were very interested in what we were doing, and always presented me with a major dilemma; be seen touching one and incurring the $10K fine or just throwing all caution to the wind and giving one a big hug. I never paid a fine so the jury is out on which way I went. One of the fun sayings down on the ice is what color is an Adele Penguin? The answer, in case you are curious, is "white if coming towards you and black if moving away." Interesting little birds in that they travel both on their legs when walking and on their bellies when scooting over the ice. They actually make much better time on their bellies than they do on their feet. Though the belly feathers are identified as being white, in truth they are much more of a ivory color due to waste contamination as you can observe in the photo. In reality they are rather dirty birds when on land during the nesting season. And while not the most pleasant critters to smell, they are cute and fun to be around. You are viewing them with the ice edge in the background. Beyond the ice edge in open water you can see two different ice bergs both of which dwarf the icebergs you've been hearing about in the news and about which much fuss is being or has been made. These bergs are just two of many we saw while I was there in the '94 -'95 summer and to put things in perspective, the one in the upper right corner would dwarf 10 aircraft carries placed end to end. The one at the top center would dwarf the one at the right. These things are BIG and you have to fly over them to even begin to get a true perspective! Normal conditions however for Antarctica! Not sure where this group of individuals was heading while we were photographing them, but for sure it wasn't into the water where I had just snapped the shot of the Killer Whale which, by the way, was just one of several hunting while we were observing. In this shot the hunters are at by back about 50 yards away.
This shot, like all the ones I'll be sharing from Antarctica, are scanned from 35 mm slides. Two Methods of Transportation Nikon F2AS; 135mm; ISO 100; likely 1/125 @ f /11.