Introduction
With the excitement of Paradise Bay behind us, we arrived the next morning at Charlotte Bay where we would take a zodiac cruise. Then for the afternoon, we would visit another penguin colony, this time Chinstrap penguins, at Palaver Point on Two Hummock Island.
Charlotte Bay
Throughout Charlotte Bay were numerous Humpback whales. Our visit, therefore, involved basically chasing after them. Well that makes it sound like we were annoying them. So let’s say we were casually cruising among them instead. There were the usual whale tales to be seen.
There was also, however, an opportunity to see something different and unique, at least to me. Off in the distance was a breaching Humpback Whale. With my camera fixed on the distant whale, I captured a series of still shots which I then stitched together into a video. With the zodiac rocking like crazy on the waves while I am shooting with a 500 mm lens, I am amazed I could do this good a job of aligning and stabilizing the video. The video is only 4 seconds, but what an exciting 4 seconds.
I know many people have seen breaching whales much closer and gotten much better photographs. Although we moved to the area they were breaching, the whales in that location stopped doing it before we got there, and instead the ones back where we just left would start breaching.
I imagine the whales were talking to each other saying something like this:
- Whale in location A: “Let’s play a game with the visitors. They are here with us right now, so start breaching.”
- Whale in location B: “Oh, that sounds like fun. Here we go!”
- Whale in location A: “They spotted you and are moving to your location.”
- Whale in location B: “Got it, we’ll stop now.
- Whale in location A: ” Right.”
- Whale in location B: “They have arrived. Start breaching.”
- Whale in location A: “Sure thing!” Oh, this is fun!”
And so it would continue…until we got bored and left for Palaver Point. I bet the whales had a great time.
Chinstrap Penguin Colony at Palaver Point
In the afternoon, we arrived we arrived at Palaver Point for a landing to visit the Chinstrap Penguin Colony here. Before landing we saw many penguins porpoising in the ocean.
The colony was separated into several groups, each on top of prominences of rock. The groups were not that far apart, but I suppose they like being up high and there is only so much room on each prominence. It makes sense they would like being up high to avoid the waves and ocean predators at the shoreline, and also to be able to see all around for other dangers.
The picture below is a very good overview shot of one group on top of a prominence with beautiful mountains and glaciers in the distance. If I were a penguin, I would choose this high location just for the view!
Like the Gentoo colony from my earlier post, there were chicks in this colony too. These chicks were slightly older than the Gentoo chicks, but not by much. In the photo below, there are actually three chicks. Can you find them all?
Not only were there chicks, there were also chicks in the making. By that I mean adult penguins mating and starting the next generation. The photo below shows two adult penguins in the act — nothing graphic, just a real moment of wildlife doing what wildlife does. If, like my wife, that’s not your thing, feel free to scroll past the image.
A little further up from the first spot, one Chinstrap Penguin started squawking loudly with his head pointed up to the sky. He persisted for a while, but for a moment, he took a short break and presented a beautiful portrait view before continuing his squawking.
Over all the activity on the ground, a Brown Skua circled overhead. Unfortunately, penguins do have predators they need to continually be on the watch for. They probably wouldn’t attack a healthy adult penguin, but the chicks are certainly in danger.
One of the more interesting things about penguins are the penguin highways they make through the ice and snow. They use them to move from place to place and you usually find them moving together in a line. It is quite cute actually. I recorded a short video of three of them moving in a line which you can view below. The sound track of the video includes the constant noise from the colony in the background.
All too soon, it was time to leave the penguin colony and return to the ship. I couldn’t resist one more photograph overlooking two groups of penguins with the austere glacier covered mountains and the beautiful deep blue ocean waters in view. But there was another wonderful dinner waiting for us, so not so bad.
My next blog post will cover a landing at Half Moon Island and sailing through the Bransfield Strait towards Elephant Island where we would take a zodiac cruise through some wonderful pack ice. Please stay tuned.
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