Early Summer Adelie breeding behavior

In late October, male Adelie Penguins begin to arrive at the colony from their winter foraging areas to stake out a territory. They often attempt to hold the same territory as in previous years, and fighting will break out if another male is on the old territory. The behavior seen above is called "flipper bashing". Adelies may seem cute and cuddly, but those flippers have a lot of muscle behind them. It is not uncommon to find bloodied, territory-less males wandering around in early November.



The territories are only as large as they need to be so that closely neighboring males cannot reach each other with their bills. These territory holding males will defend their territories and wait for their mate to arrive for up to several weeks.


As we arrived at Cape Crozier in mid November, most of the males were already at the colony with very well defined territories, and the females were arriving in droves from the sea. Here is a line of female Adelies making their way across the sea ice to the colony. They will go to the same nest they nested in last year in hopes that their partner is waiting for them there with a well built nest. If not, they will shop in the area for another suitable candidate.



Males will advertise themselves and their territory by performing the EV display or Ecstatic Vocalization. The EV is characterized by the penguin thrusting out his chest, throwing his head back, and vibrating his chest to make a repeated chuckling call. It is very sexy. This display lets other males know about the territory holding male and it is not uncommon to find an area with multiple males EVing at the same time.



The males will also collect rocks and build a large pile with a bowl in the middle, perfect for keeping eggs and hatchlings out of the mud. They often steal rocks from their neighbors' nests when they aren't watching. Early in the season, males seem to alternate between EVing, stealing rocks from each other, and trying to bite males that are stealing rocks from their own nests. Constant vigilance is very important.



Here is a female examining this male performing the EV display. He has a pretty decent pile of rocks and has yet to find his mate. If his mate does not arrive soon, he will attempt to attract a different female to mate with.



Penguin pair bonding involves lots of eyeing each other with their heads down and sidestepping towards each other.



They also perform the LHV, which is the standard way in which penguins greet each other. The LHV consists of both members of the pair waving their heads back and forth in time with each other and loudly calling. They will continue to LHV throughout the season any time one partner returns to the nest from a foraging trip.



Pairs that were mates in previous years briefly become acquainted with each other and then get down to the business of breeding. They will copulate several times over the next week until the female has laid two eggs. This time of year it is very easy to differentiate between males and females because the females always have two muddy footprints on their backs.



When the second egg is laid the female will quickly gather some more rocks for the nest and then head out to sea to forage for Crystal Krill. By this time she is very skinny from producing two very large eggs and must bulk up before beginning the long and difficult task of raising two fully grown chicks to nearly adult size.



She will forage at sea for one or two weeks, while the male incubates the egg. This is no small task for him, as he has already been fasting for a several weeks defending the territory. He will continue to burn fuel by keeping the eggs warm and defending the nest from other adult penguins and the resident egg-predators: the skuas. If she does not return before he uses all of his fat reserves, he will abandon the nest to feed himself.



Over the next month they will take turns incubating the eggs and foraging. The foraging trips will get shorter and shorter as the hatch date approaches, and in mid-December it is not uncommon to find both members of the pair at the nest, waiting for the chicks to hatch. By this time they have hopefully fattened up enough to last them until the end of the breeding season, as almost all of the fish and krill they gather from now on will go towards feeding two voracious chicks.

First Day at Cape Crozier

11/17/2009


Today we hopped on an A-Star helicopter in McMurdo and took a 45 minute flight to the Cape Crozier Hut. The hut is a 18 by 10 foot building equipped with a propane heater, a propane stove, solar panels, a wind generator, 4 bunks, a food pantry, and a small sitting area. There is also two small lean-tos on the side of the hut, one for the "toilet", which is a bucket with a seat over it, and one for the "freezer", where frozen or mostly frozen food can be stored. The hut is located about 1km away and out of site of the penguin colony, to reduce disturbance.

At the helo pad we were greeted by Jeff Wilson and Mark Smith, two wildlife film guys who are working for the BBC filming the Icy Planet series.

Once we had unloaded the helecopter of 3 months worth of food, our tents, our own gear, and the penguin weigh-bridge, we began making camp. This involved digging out level ground for our tents and setting them up. We had a choice between a North Face Mountain Tent and a Scott Tent. I chose a Scott Tent.

We got done at about 8pm and ate a quick dinner. After our spaghetti, Scott, Grant, myself, and the BBC hiked to the penguin colony to finally get a look at some penguins! We first hiked to the top of Pat's Peak, a crest of volcanic rock that is overlooks the colony and the Ross Sea Ice Shelf from the South. I'm not sure how to go about describing the awesomeness of my first glimpse of 300,000 breeding penguins. Needless to say it was one of the more striking scenes I've witnessed. Also, when walking up to the peak from the back side, where the hut is located, we couldn't hear anything but the wind and the South Polar Skuas calling. Then, just when we got near the top, we began to be able to differentiate thousands of faint penguins calls filtering up towards us.

We walked down the face of Pat's Peak, through the Adelie Penguin colony, and out onto the fast ice where lines of Adelie penguins were arriving at the colony from sea. Grant gave up a quick rundown on penguin behavior and sea ice safety. Cape Crozier is also home to an Emperor Penguin colony. We were followed by 4 very curious Emperor Penguins as we walked around on the sea ice. In addition, we were treated to a flyby by several Snow Petrels, likely drawn to the colony by the strong odor of Crystal krill. At about 1am we were getting very tired, despite the constant daylight, and headed back to the hut for some much needed rest.

Pressure Ridges and Weddell Seals!

Scott and I had Sea Ice Training today! This is a one day course that teaches us important things like: how to avoid driving over cracks in the ice that are too big for your vehicle, how to anchor a tent to bare ice, how to avoid falling into holes in the ice, how to help someone who has fallen into the ice, etc. We did a small amount of classroom prep, then hopped into the Hagglund to drive over the sea ice to an area that had some cracks in it.

The coast immediately around McMurdo station has remained frozen since around 2000, so we had to drive a way out before we could find ice thin enough to have developed good, measure able cracks. This afforded us some amazing scenery. Also, driving over the ocean is a Hagglund is awesome!

The ice was covered in over a foot of new snow from the blizzard, so our instructor pointed out areas where he had previously GPS marked cracks. Before we could measure the cracks, we had to dig away all the snow. As a general rule, if the ice is less and 30 inches thick in the crack, you can only drive over it if the width of the crack is less and 1/3 the length of your vehicles contact point. For example our hagglund covers 6 feet of ground as it drives, so we could cross a two foot crack, even if it went all the way to the water.

to measure thickness, you drill holes into the deepest part of the crack, and the edges of the crack. You have to keep adding lengths of drill, because the ice is often several meters thick.

Once you hit seawater, you stick a measuring tape with a heavy metal bar tied to it into the hole. When you pull the tape, the bar gets pulled sideways and hits on the bottom of the ice. You can then find out whether or not the ice in the crack is thin enough to worry about measuring the width of the crack.

Although this is all useful information, we do not have vehicles at Cape Crozier. Our main concern will be not stepping into a crack and getting hypothermia. This was covered briefly in the course a well, as we wandered around in the pressure ridges, looking for danger. And seals. Soon to come: Pressure Ridges and Weddell seal photos!!!!

Food selection and Scott Bas

Day 4 at McMurdo:
Today was spent mostly getting our gear together and packing our food for the entire field season. 'Shopping' for that much food was AWESOME. I was surprised at the quality of choices we had. We'll be eating lots of canned, frozen, or dried goods. But no SPAM! Imagine my disappointment.


In the evening we visited Scott Base, the New Zealand Antarctic Station. It is just a 45 minute walk away. On Thusdays they invite the Americans over to their pub. I got to see the closest thing we get to a sunset on the way back home to McMurdo.

Happy Camper and McMurdo Station

Its day three at McMurdo Field Station. I spent the first two days at Happy Camper, a 2 day long training session that occurs on the fast ice near McMurdo. This training is required for anyone spending any time at remote field camps in Antarctica. Basically we were driven out onto the ice and dropped off for 36 hours to build our own camp, set up tents, cook, and keep warm. There were 20 of us, mostly new to the ice, as veterans just take a short refresher course.


First we went over the basics in the classroom at McMurdo: How to avoid hypothermia, frostbite, sunburn, trenchfoot, etc. Then we picked up our lunches and hopped into 'Delta Trucks', which took us to the Happy Camper site. At this point we got issued 'sleep kits' containing two sleeping pads, a heavy sleeping bag, and a fleece liner. This is more or less what I'll be sleeping on for the rest of the season, with the added bonus of a thermarest, Yay! At this point we hiked out to an untouched area of the ice, and began to set up camp.


First we set up Scott tents. These are canvas tents that were invented at about the same time Captain Scott was trudging his way around Antarctica (1901-1912). They are simple, and can handle winds up to 100 miles per hour if anchored properly.


Next was the Quinzhee Hut. This is constructed by making a massive pile of snow and then digging out the inside. We cheated by piling snow on top of all our gear. Next you dig an entrance into the hut that approaches the interior from underneath. This way all the warm air gets trapped inside. It took 20 people several hours to make one hut, and in the end it only held three people. But I'm told they slept quite warmly.

We also set up 6 Mountain Tents, which are a little more intense than your standard backpacking tent. They hold 2 people and use the usual titanium and bungee pole system. They can't handle nearly the wind the Scott tents do, but their small size makes for warmer sleeping. To insure they did not blow away, we quarried large snow blocks from the pristine snow nearby and built a 50 ft long wall to shelter all the mountain tents. We used shovels and saws to get out the blocks, and stacked them like bricks to create a 4 foot tall wind barrier.

We constructed a trench kitchen with a wind wall surrounding it, and used Wisperlite stoves for melting snow to drink and cook with. Dinner consisted of all the dehydrated soup you could ask for and freeze-dried, packaged dinners. Those that wanted to dug individual trenches with roofes on top to sleep in. I decided I didn't want to dig any more trenches, and slept in one of the Scott tents, which was awesome. I stayed warm and would have gotten a lot of sleep if I wasn't so excited. I'm finding that with 24 hours of broad daylight, I have a difficult time unwinding at the end of the day.

The weather stayed nice (15-20 degrees) for most of the day, but around 3 am, the wind came up and things got colder. It was hard getting out of my cocoon of warmth in the morning. Making breakfast and breaking down all the tents took about 2 hours. Then we were picked up by our instructors, who gave us several hours of additional training on VHF and HF radio operation, communication protocol, helicopter safety, and rescue. One exercise involved wandering around in the snow with a bucket over our heads, looking for a lost teammate. The bucket simulated the total lack of vision and sound that occurs during a whiteout. Overall it was an extremely fun experience, but I had to take a long nap yesterday afternoon.

McMurdo Station

The view from the c-17 as we passed over the Ross Sea.




My blinding view of the ice while stepping of the Jet after a 5.5 hour flight.




These jets are large enough to hold two helicopters yet they land them on the layer of 'fast ice' that covers the southern portion of the Ross Sea.


I finally made it to the ice! I will have more to come, but I am very tired from the long flight down in our C-17. We have 'Happy Campers' tomorrow morning. This is the two day extreme climate survival course we all have to take before working out in the field. Also to come is Sea Ice Training. I am anxious to get some rest. It is 10PM here and still broad daylight. I hope I can convince my body to go to sleep!

Getting to the ice

This multi-leg journey to the ice is proving to be a bit of a challenge. I left the Portland International Airport at 5PM Monday for a three hour flight to LA. Then came the 15 hour flight to Syndey, Australia, quickly followed by a 3 hour flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. Arriving in Christchurch at 2PM on Wednesday, I was pleasently greeted with clear skies and the warm summer weather of the temperate Southern Hemishphere. After meeting with my crew to discuss some penguin project details, I caught some much needed sleep at our charming bed and breakfast.

Thursday we all filed into shuttles to be dropped off at the Clothing Distribution Center. This is where we were all giving two duffel bags filled with down parkas, windproof pants, fur gauntletts, extreme weather boots, and long underwear. It is extremely inportant that everything fit perfectly, so it took some time to try everything on and exchange for different sizes.

It is now Friday. After an early morning of getting suited up, watching a safety breifing, and waiting next to our giant, Air Force C-17 for half an hour, we were told that the jet had mechanical problems and would not be flying to the ice. The next available C-17 will come to Christchurch on Monday. Bummer!

I'm going to attempt to make the most of the next couple of days in Christchurch by taking some hikes and attempting to get a glimpse of some native wildlife.

General Adelie Biology

General
For a more in depth look at Adelie biology, check out the penguin science website at www.penguinscience.com. I've included a quick summary of what we know of these birds. The Adélie Penguin is a medium sized penguin (~28in tall, weighing 8-12lbs). It is a carnivorous bird, eating krill, fish, and squid. The Adélie penguin depends on large areas of pack ice because its main prey item, the Chrystal Krill, breeds under the ice. The penguins also rest and avoid predators on top of the ice. They spend their winter months (February-October) foraging far out to sea and they come to ice free land to breed in the summer months (Late October-February). Because of the rarity of ice-free, coastal areas, Adelies nest in dense colonies of up to several hundred thousand pairs. I will be studying Adélie Penguins during their breeding phase.



Breeding Biology
In the spring (late October in the southern hemisphere) the males migrate to the Antarctic continent or Antarctic islands to rebuild their nests and await the return of the females. The male constructs a mound of pebbles with a bowl in the center for eggs. Males will energetically guard their nests from other males looking for a nest site. Space is limited! The females return a few days later and choose their mates. They prefer to nest in the same location as the previous year, and in this way a female often pairs with the same male for consecutive years. About a week later, the female lays two eggs and then departs from the colony to forage for one or two weeks. She may have to walk several miles across ice to get to open water. Meanwhile, the male will incubate the eggs. Then she will return to incubate and the male will go to sea to forage. They will take turns in this way until the chicks hatch.


Chick rearing is much more demanding than egg care. Chicks grow fast and must eat frequently to gain the weight they need to leave the colony before winter. The adults will take turns foraging for food and brooding the chicks. When the chicks are small, they must be kept warm and guarded from predatory Skuas at all times. The Antarctic Skua is a large seabird which nests nearby. At three weeks, the chicks are large enough to keep themselves warm and they are too large for a Skua to drag away. They now need so much food that both parents must forage. The chicks huddle together in large groups called crèches, waiting for the return of a parent with a delicious meal of regurgitated krill. In late February, the chicks leave the crèches and go out to sea. They require no more care from the adults. They will spend the next few years hunting and gaining experience. At the age of 3 or 4, they will come back to the colony of their birth to practice building nests and attracting mates. By age 5 they will most likely have enough experience to raise chicks of their own. Adélie penguins have been known to live as long as 20 years in the wild.

Conservation Concerns
Global Climate Change: Adélie Penguins require pack ice for their survival. Global warming, caused by human use of fossil fuels, is quickly melting the world's ice. Adélie penguin colonies are disappearing from the northern Antarctic Peninsula. Alternately, penguin populations are growing in the Ross Sea, a southern area of Antarctica. The Ross Sea has historically been covered by a massive ice shelf. As this ice shelf breaks apart, it creates pack ice habitat for Adélie Penguins. The Ross Sea is the last refuge for this and many other Antarctic species. If global warming continues, even the Ross Sea will lose its ice cover, eliminating any chance of survival for Antarctic penguins.



Overfishing: Adélie penguins have been shown to have a much greater chance of raising chicks to fledging if their diet contains a high percentage of fish. There is little regulation of fishing practices in the Southern Ocean and many fish stocks have been severely depleted since the 1960's. Researchers think penguin diets now contain a much lower percentage of fish. Although Adélie Penguins can cope with this to some extent, populations of Emperor Penguins, Gentoo Penguins, and Chinstrap Penguins are quickly shrinking.