The Adélies, as will be seen in these pages, are extremely brave, and though panic occasionally overtakes them, I have seen a bird return time after time to attack a seaman who was brutally sending it flying by kicks from his sea-boot, before I arrived to interfere. An exact description of the plumage of the Adélie penguins will be found in the [Appendix], as it is more especially of their habits that I intend to treat in this work.
Before describing these, and with a view to making them more intelligible to the general reader, I will proceed to a short explanation.
The Adélie penguins spend their summer and bring forth their young in the far South. Nesting on the shores of the Antarctic continent, and on the islands of the Antarctic seas, they are always close to the water, being dependent on the sea for their food, as are all Antarctic fauna; the frozen regions inland, for all practical purposes, being barren of both animal and vegetable life.
Their requirements are few: they seek no shelter from the terrible Antarctic gales, their rookeries in most cases being in open wind-swept spots. In fact, three of the four rookeries I visited were possibly in the three most windy regions of the Antarctic. The reason for this is that only wind-swept places are so kept bare of snow that solid ground and pebbles for making nests are to be found.
When the chicks are hatched and fully fledged, they are taught to swim, and when this is accomplished and they can catch food for themselves, both young and old leave the Southern limits of the sea, and make their way to the pack-ice out to the northward, thus escaping the rigors and darkness of the Antarctic winter, and keeping where they will find the open water which they need. For in the winter the seas where they nest are completely covered by a thick sheet of ice which does not break out until early in the following summer. Much of this ice is then borne northward by tide and wind, and accumulates to form the vast rafts of what is called “pack-ice,” many hundreds of miles in extent, which lie upon the surface of the Antarctic seas. ([Fig. 4.])
It is to this mass of floating sea-ice that the Adélie penguins make their way in the autumn, but as their further movements here are at present something of a mystery, the question will be discussed at greater length presently.
When young and old leave the rookery at the end of the breeding season, the new ice has not yet been formed, and their long journey to the pack has to be made by water, but they are wonderful swimmers and seem to cover the hundreds of miles quite easily.
Arrived on the pack, the first year's birds remain there for two winters. It is not until after their first moult, the autumn following their departure from the rookery, that they grow the distinguishing mark of the adult, black feathers replacing the white plumage which has hitherto covered the throat.
The spring following this, and probably every spring for the rest of their lives, they return South to breed, performing their journey, very often, not only by water, but on foot across many miles of frozen sea.
