Monday, January 8, 2007

Penguin Update

A day after the first sighting, we flew over Lake Fryxell and saw the penguins almost to the west shore, farthest away from the ocean. Hard to watch. The next two days after that though, we only saw one penguin. I don't know whether this penguin was the leader or a defector, but the other 5 were nowhere in sight. The good news is that this one was decisively headed back towards the ocean, and we observed it in front of F6, where we originally saw them, heading east. We didn't bother it and haven't seen it since. It's been 3 days, hopefully it is swimming in the ocean and eating it's fill. I can only hope that the other 5 were ahead of it!

1 comment:

Emily said...

We see these big glorified sea gulls called Skua that will try to dive bomb you if they think you've got food. In McMurdo it's pretty bad, out here they are fairly rare. Haven't seen any seals yet (besides the mummified ones) but perhaps for the week I'm back in town, closer to open water. For their sake, I don't want to see any other animals out here!
Definitely will put together a slideshow if you'll watch!