Local Youth

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

As the Adelie penguin population continues to decrease in the surrounding area, due to……yes you guessed it climate change, the Gentoo penguins are moving in. The changes in sea ice and the warmer temperatures result in the Adelie penguins moving South in search of the cold weather and more sea ice. Therefore, there are many more Gentoos in recent years, that visit station and the surrounding islands. The penguin experts, “the birders,” suspect they’ll start forming colonies and breeding in our neck of the woods in the near future.

So it comes as no surprise that the Gentoos have been hanging out more and more lately. The other night there were 10 penguins incredibley close to station, where they hunkered down for the evening. Whenever I see single penguins, I always assume they are young boy penguins just cruising looking for trouble. Like the local youth you see hanging out on street corners checking things out. Alex & I went out to say goodnight and snapped a few photos around 11pm. The official sunset for tonight is 11:41pm and the sunrise is 2:35am.  As you can see in these photos it doesn’t really get dark here anymore.

I’ll be checking every night to see if my little buddies are back. The other night there were only 2 of them and I could see a bunch more across the inlet from us. You can usually find a few penguins wandering about the station sometime during the day. How wonderful is that?!