Fig. 4. Pack Ice (on which the Adélies winter)
Two Weddell Seals are seen on a Floe
Fig. 5. Heavy Seas in the Autumn
For those birds who nest in the southernmost rookeries, such as Cape Crozier, this journey must mean for them a journey of at least four hundred miles by water, and an unknown but considerable distance on foot over ice.
As I am about to describe the manners and customs of Adélie penguins at the Cape Adare rookery, I will give a short description of that spot.
Cape Adare is situated in lat. 71° 14′ S. long. 170° 10′ E., and is a neck of land jutting out from the sheer and ice-bound foot-hills of South Victoria Land northwards for a distance of some twenty miles.
For its whole length, the sides of this Cape rise sheer out of the sea, affording no foothold except at the extreme end, where a low beach has been formed, nestling against the steep side of the cliff which here rises almost perpendicularly to a height of over 1000 feet.
Hurricanes frequently sweep this beach, so that snow never settles there for long, and as it is composed of basaltic material freely strewn with rounded pebbles, it forms a convenient nesting site, and it was on this spot that I made the observations set forth in the following pages.