Penguins, Antarctic November 2023

 Penguins are the star of the show, at least in their opinion. They are as curious about humans as the  humans are about them.

The photos are all taken by myself, with my Samsung phone. Very little editing has been done to them. I think they are better in the raw, and I really don't  have the skills to do it better. To just view the photos, click on any of them to get a full screen slide show. You can enlarge any of the videos by clicking the square thing in the bottom right.

Watching penguins are such a joy. However I am realizing, looking back at the photos just how amazing these guys are. Happy Feet got it right in many ways, and wrong in so many more ways.

To best watch these two videos, stand in the freezer, try to work your phone with thick gloves, and try to keep from laughing while not dropping your phone. 

We saw four different kind of penguins, with the exception of the Emperor and the Rare Red penguins, they are in the family of Brush Tail Penguins. They hunt in packs, and lay eggs in nests they make in the rocks. 

Chin Straps are easy to spot
because of that thin line that looks 
they are grinning at you

    
   

Gentoos wear head sets

  

Adélie penguins. At least I think they are

Going through my thousands of photos.

I wish I had taken a better photo of these lesser seen penguins.    .

At left, you can see the rare
red penguins.
Wearing our ship issued parkas, and walking inline
on our highways, our hiking style resembled
the penguins.

Our lone Emperor Penguin.
Hanging out on an ice sheet

     

On land they have two modes of travel        
The familiar waddle.

Then they will flop down and toboggan. 
I wanted to do some tobogganing,
but we were not allowed to 
sit on the ice.

 

At first I was distressed at
how disturbed the snow pack was because 
I assumed it was human tracks.
Nope, these are what is known as 
penguin highways.

We were restricted to the 
highways that the
expedition team laid out for us.
Penguins could use any highway
they like

We were not only taught the rules,
we were shown WHY the rules.

Try walking like a penguin.
Then try doing it on rocks.

     

When you stop to think about where they are,
and where they want to go,
and how they  move about, 
these little guys astonish. 

As the granny of small folk, no discussion would be complete without mentioning poop.

Penguin poop is red, they eat red shrimp.
And they spray it out everywhere.

    

So if you wanna make a nest in the rocks, first you
have to get down to the rocks.
By spraying their dark poop out a patch of dark
appears on the snow, melting the snow. 

The rest of these are random penguin photos just because I think they are so cool.

This cheeky little guy is standing next to
a sea lion. Sea lions eat penguins.