Volunteer Point - 17 January 2021 - No 21

King Penguin’s bonding
Foreplay
Puritanical observer - who registered its objection by pecking


Ahh

Four of us and our driver ventured to Volunteer Point on Sunday.  It took around 2:30hrs to travel the 45 miles from Stanley.  About a third of the route was on tarmac, another third on consolidated gravel roads - and the final third was real off roaming travel on nothing more than the occasional track.  

Volunteer Point is an isthmus with the open sea - the South Atlantic on one side and an inlet on the other.  It is home to large King Penguin and Gentoo breeding colonies along side each other with Magellanic Penguins nest in burrows in the nearby dunes.

The bigger the penguin the cleaner the breeding colony!  The Gentoo colony positively stank.  The Magellanic’s burrows were fly infested.

 
Changing of the guard? Kings in front of Magellanics
 

Gentoo penguin on the march

King Penguin colony


The King Penguins appeared to swim for fun 


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