Falkland Islands Penguins

When most of us think penguins, we imagine them sliding around on ice against a backdrop of snow-frosted boulders.

As such, visiting a penguin colony in New Zealand or the Falkland Islands may at first make you imagine the worst of global warming predictions has unfolded, and what should be glacial is fast evolving to be a desert.

Given the heated rhetoric regarding our gradually warming world, we can be forgiven for this misconception.

The reality is that the Falkland Islands has remained a Maritime Climate that keeps temperatures within a narrow band between about 23 degrees and 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  It occasionally snows, but strong winds restrict snow accumulation.

Upon being picked up by our private tour guide Richard, we took a quick drive through the small port town of Stanley and then about two hours through rather barren, windblown tundra.

Charles Darwin found some plants that grow between "Stone Runs" to be unique to the Falklands when he visited during his second voyage on the Beagle.

Our guide Richard also pointed out minefields planted by Argentina during their failed attempt to wrestle control of the Falkland Islands from Great Britain in 1982.

The Falkland Islands are among the last, far-flung vestiges of the British Empire which once ruled a fourth of the world.  Argentina's government believes nearby Argentina has a stronger claim to rule this former British Crown Colony, just as South America shook off other remote European colonial rule.

The Iron Lady, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was not the type to passively stand back and allow a British Overseas Territory to be invaded and essentially annexed by a foreign nation.  She deployed the still formidable British Navy to retake this distant outpost.  74 days later, Argentina's military surrendered and retreated back to the mainland.  Argentina lost 649 troops, and 255 Brits also perished in this undeclared war.  Land mines that had been planted by the invaders as a barrier to British troops remained.

Fortunately, Argentina eventually provided a map of where its land mines lay, but such maps are never completely accurate.  Upon suffering some casualties trying to clear the fields, the Brits brought in specialists from Zimbabwe, who have become experts due to their own terrible history with Rhodesia.  Most of the minefields have now been cleared, though fields are still marked with danger signs, just in case.

Penguins don't tend to explode, incidentally, because fortunately they are not heavy enough to set off the land mines, if they wandered that far astray.

Bertha's Beach is home to about 500 pairs of Gentoo Penguins, making it the second largest penguin colony in the the Falklands.  In addition to Gentoo, for which the Falkland Islands can claim the highest population anywhere in the world, there are also Rockhopper, Macoroni, Magellenic and King Penguins in the Falklands, which is five out of a possible 18 penguin species currently known to exist.

Penguins spend much of their lives at sea, coming to places like Bertha's Beach to lay and incubate their eggs in the Southern Hemisphere's summer (U.S. winter).

Penguins are instinctively monogamous.  They return to the same nesting area each year.  At first, it is surprising to hear what you might imagine to be quiet little creatures squawking loudly, but that is their way of hooking up with their long lost mates after weeks or months at sea.

When an egg has been lain, both parents take turns keeping it warm for incubation.  The egg rests on their feet to keep it off the cold ground and is tucked up in a warm pouch on their underbellies, sort of like an upside down kangaroo pouch.

The babies that had been born about a month before we visited were already almost as big as the adults, though a lot of their size is a result of their fluffy down feathers.  Just as the penguin mates reach out to reunite through loud calls, parents find their babies the same way.

These are sleeping fluffy babies, not dead ones.

The biggest danger for the baby penguin is when both parents leave the nest to swim out to gather more food from the sea.

The much hated skua (pronounced skoo-uh), which look a lot like big, brown seagulls to me, prey on baby penguins, and the best efforts by other adults in the colony to come to their rescue are not always sufficient.  We saw a few penguin corpses on the ground.  Unfortunately for the penguins, that is just nature, and as such, humans allow the drama of sad parent returning to feed a baby that has been killed by skua to unfold, maintaining the natural balance.

Skuas also sometimes steal eggs, but one penguin parent or the other usually sits vigilantly on their eggs.  Skuas don't want to tangle with full-grown penguins, which have been hardened into fighting shape during five dangerous years spent mostly at sea as they age to parental maturity, even if they aren't much larger than their babies before babies shed their feathers through "catastrophic molting."

Another sad drama that unfolds is when two babies are born to the same couple, especially in lean years when the foundation of their diet, krill, isn't as plentiful.  The taller one often ends up getting the bulk of the food, resulting in the smaller sometimes perishing due to insufficient nutrition, or basically Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Parent penguins must swim out in the frigid ocean to catch krill to feed to their children as well as themselves.  We could watch these penguins waddle through the wild grass down to the sand.

When they reached the water's edge, they dove forward, and then suddenly they were no longer awkward little land mammals holding out their wings to balance themselves but aerodynamic swimmers gliding through the water.

As mentioned, their primary diet is krill, a red crustacean.  Digesting krill makes penguin guano red, which isn't so noticeable on the rutted dirt at Bertha's Beach rookery but helps identify penguins on ice bergs and snow-covered shores of Antarctica.

Many whales, including humpback and minke varieties we would see in Antarctica, also have diets rich in krill, which are bountiful in icy waters.  As odd as it seems, whales fatten up during the cold times they spend in frigid seas before going to warmer areas to breed.

Penguins can be seen swimming close to whales in Antarctica, so you might think with the big gulps of krill-rich sea water whales ingest at once, more than a few penguins have found themselves in a situation like Jonah, but those whales don't eat penguins.  Killer Orcas, seals, sharks and some birds, however, do eat penguins, making lives at sea always perilous for these little creatures, who depending on species range from about 17 inches to less than 4 feet tall.

The Gentoo Penguins we saw at Bertha's Beach were mostly about two and a half feet tall and weigh about 13 pounds.

They're so friendly, curious and near-sighted that we often had to back up to avoid getting closer than the required 2 meter (about six feet) buffer zone.

We found one photogenic King Penguin standing on the beach, resting.  We were required to give him a wider berth.

Linda Rood with King Penguin

In addition to being larger than Gentoos, the King Penguin has prominent yellow markings.  While our guide Richard said that the King was just resting, I can imagine a scenario where he lost his mate and can't decide where to go from here.

While penguins tend to be monogamous, one mate sometimes won't survive long weeks at sea hunted by those larger predators.  Females who lose their mates tend to hook up with new penguin dudes, while males pine for their lost soul mates, like that King.  Then again, I have no idea if that King was a male.  There's no easy way to know penguin sex from afar, unless you're a penguin, presumably.

We all enjoyed the experience of visiting this penguin colony.  For our friend Linda, a long time teacher who spent many years introducing her second-graders to lovable little "pengies" through books and displays, it was literally a dream come true.

In the morning, we had spent a bit of time walking around Stanley before meeting our tour guide.  A short walk from the tender port is a landmark Whale Bone Arch next to Christ Church Cathedral.

Just a few steps further, we had espresso-based coffees at a place called Wifi Cafe, which we mistakenly thought would have free wifi, but there's no free internet in the isolated Falkland Island.

After the tour, we contemplated a British pub lunch in town, but we all ended up tendering back to the ship, and sure enough the buffet offered crispy fish and chips as one of the choices.

I should mention that we thought we might not have visited this penguin colony in the Falkland Islands, because we kept hitting dead ends trying to book a tour, but Linda found an opening that must have been cancelled minutes earlier.

You can actually see penguins at Gypsy Cove, which is just 4 miles from the port in Stanley.  Relatively inexpensive transportation (about $20) is available on shore if the walk seems too daunting.  You won't get as close to penguins as we did, but it's an inexpensive way to spend the day beyond mailing postcards, souvenir shopping and eating fish and chips.

The premium location --- and highest price --- for penguin spotting in the Falklands is Volunteer Point, which 1000 King Penguins call home.  One of the expert lecturers on board said having tickets for Volunteer Point was like winning the penguin lottery.

We had reserved a back-up tour to see penguins in Punta Arenas, Chile, near the end of our cruise.  I thought we would cancel that one after having such a successful penguin experience in the Falklands, but Julie and Linda in particular wanted more penguin encounters of the third kind.

King Penguin at Bertha's Beach (photo courtesy of Linda Rood)