CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- The Adélie Penguin breeding season in Antarctica is short. By late January it is time for everyone to leave including the penguins. Before our team departs our last task is to band the chicks... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- Penguin chicks are born with a fine cover of small soft feathers. In a few days they will loose those feathers and grow wooly thick gray ones. These feathers will keep them warm for the next few weeks, but are not waterproof... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ANTARCTICA-- I’m sure Inuits have a name for it, but otherwise it’s the fizzing sound as great expanses of ice dissolve so rapidly that any air still between its spaces or molecules is released into the atmosphere. We heard that sound... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- Not all of our work is in the field; some requires time in a lab and long hours working with a stereoscope. One of the questions we are trying to answer is what do the penguins eat? In previous times researchers would sacrifice a penguin and examine their stomach contents... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- Male Adélie Penguins were seen this year at Cape Royds on Oct 21. First a trickle then a flood, by mid November most of the nests had been built, the males had found a mate and the eggs were laid... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA– The major trust of our project is to quantify the vital rates of Adélie Penguins in their changing world, as global climate change proceeds. Vital rates means such things as age of first breeding, proportion of years in which they breed... {Read More »}

CAPE ROYDS, ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- This season, Jean came down to McMurdo Station a few weeks early with the idea of setting up a time-lapse camera at Cape Royds to record the complete cycle of colony formation as penguins returned from their wintering area... {Read More »}

Although the penguin is the icon of the Antarctic, many penguins prefer lower latitudes. Several species venture as far south as the Antarctic Peninsula, but only the emperors and the Adélies live along the continental coastline. {Read More »}