Hello, Macaroni Penguins at Cape Lookout

Krystyana Richter — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:15:54 +0000

Well, the day started with a landing at what would have been the preferred site for Shackleton and his men, Cape Lookout. They attempted to land at Cape Valentine, but the real place where they stayed and Shackleton sailed from to South Georgia, is Point Wild.

Cape Lookout is mostly rock and barely any beach, but the rock is very interesting due to the layers and layers that are each about an inch thick on average. We separated into groups and took a zodiac cruise, with a 15 minute stop on a small beach. The main penguin species were chinstrap but a few macaroni penguins were hopping among them.

chinstrap penguin

two macaroni penguins

The macaroni’s interesting features are an orange crest that connects in the middle, red eyes, and an orange beak. The macaroni penguin comes by its name from the nickname given to the hats with a feather on them, think of the song Yankee Doodle “he stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” like the macaroni penguins’ crest.

Macaroni penguin shaking off water

macaroni penguin with rock in beak

This was the first day we saw elephant seals (by the way, that’s why the island is called Elephant Island, because that is what the discoverer of the island saw…elephant seals and incidentally, if you look at a map of the island, it sort of looks like the head of an elephant).

Elephant seal male pup winking

Pintado petrels were in the hundreds and the small Wilson’s storm petrels were hopping above the water in among the crowds of petrels as they flew from one section of ocean to another. To add to the excitement, a penguin had died (or was killed) and all the petrels were scrambling to get piece of it, as well as other species of petrel. The Pintado petrels were like piranhas and they were loud.

Pintada petrels eating penguin remains

Wilson's storm petrel

Pintada petrel taking off

Wilson's storm petrel hopping on water

Pintada petrels taking off

The hotel department provided hot chocolate on our zodiac cruise by sending out a zodiac with hot chocolate and alcoholic fixings. The zodiac they used had a flag waving above that said “Hot Choco” in red.

The Hot Choco Pirates

The funny thing today was that many of the penguins seemed to be very clumsy. First we saw a chinstrap slip and fall on a cliff face, another chinstrap kept on slipping into the ocean because of the waves, and a macaroni penguin slid off a steep rock face after desperately trying to stay up right, and splashed into the ocean. My mom was putting into the little virtual speech bubbles above their heads “I meant to do that”.

GPS Track – From King George to Elephant Island, Antarctica

Jake Richter — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:01:37 +0000

We arrived this morning at Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica around 7:15am (which coincided with when we work up). We spent the late morning on a Zodiac tour and doing a landing at Cape Lookout on the southwestern part of the island, where we encountered our first Macaroni penguins and elephant seals (after which the island is named).

In the afternoon we visited Point Wild on the northeastern part of the island (see previous post for some photos).

Tomorrow we’re due to make landfall in the South Orkney Islands.

The GPS track for the last day or so can be found below:

The Traveling Richters » Cape Lookout

Hello, Macaroni Penguins at Cape Lookout

GPS Track – From King George to Elephant Island, Antarctica