Fig. 69. “When she broke out, they became reconciled”
Fig. 70. Adélie's Nests on Top of Cape Adare, to reach which they must make a Precipitous Climb of 1000 feet
Up in the rookery, fully fledged youngsters could be seen clamouring in vain for food, the old birds resolutely refusing to feed them now that they were able to forage for themselves. The adults who instructed the young in the water had finished their moult, and were themselves ready to depart. Many others, however, still wandered disconsolately about the land, some of them only half fledged, and moping under boulders or any sort of shelter from the chilly breezes, and long after all the youngsters had departed, solitary moulting birds were to be found, emaciated and miserable, patches of loose feathers still clinging to the new coat which was making such a tardy growth. In some places we found these old birds in holes under the rocks, the old moulted feathers making some sort of a bed which helped to protect their late wearers from the cold.
Both at Cape Adare in 1910 and at Inexpressible Island in 1911, I found that though young and old left the rookery simultaneously at first, yet after all the young had departed many adults still remained behind owing to the lateness of their moult, and this is directly at variance with the remarks of Mr. Borchgravink on the subject, because he says that the old birds all leave the rookery first, abandoning the young, who are driven by necessity to take to the water and learn to swim.
Well indeed was it for my companions and me that this was so, for in the autumn of 1912 we were in sore straits for food, and had it not been that at a very late date we collected some ninety old moulting birds on Inexpressible Island, I doubt if we would have seen the sun rise in the next spring.
At Cape Adare in 1911, half the rookery had departed when we arrived in the autumn. The rest took to the sea in batches some hundreds strong. These parties wandered about the beach and ice-foot in company for some time, then entering the water and swimming northward they were seen no more.