antarctic rhythms

A windy, gusty day, snow coming at you horizontally. After this past week I am amazed - I could be describing Antarctica or an eastern US town equally well. Well, here instead of steel and glass and brick, I am surrounded by sheer cliffs of rock and ice. Looking out from the cliffs on a clear day, tabular icebergs stretch toward the horizon. Gloomy gray skies reflect back on the waves. Crabeater seals lounge on chunks of sea ice. I swing my backpack onto my shoulders, check the volume on my radio, and hike uphill. Through snow, over lichen-decorated rock, to the penguins. Rocks coated in guano, some days I scarcely notice the smell. The chicks are adorable, or ugly, sitting in the penguin colony, chasing parents with food, slurping down their krill lunch, picking at their molting feathers, getting in trouble with the neighbors. Adults scamper to and from the water in search of food for their chicks, tobogganing up or down the snowy slope, watching me with curiosity, fear, disinterest. Each has its own opinion of my motives. They build their rock nests, even now as they prepare to take to the water and abandon them to the winter. Pick up a rock, add it to the nest. Over and over. A chick mimics, but can't get a good grasp on the pebble. One penguin stretches it neck, waving its wings and calling out in its ecstatic display. Others join in and soon there's a cacophony. On another day a skua flies low overhead, triggering calls of alarm that race through the colony. The skua divebombs me, perhaps its own chicks are nearby. Each day is different - blue skies, gray skies, waters open at one moment may become choked in bits of ice with a change in wind. Penguins porpoising in the water, milling at the edge of the water, squabbling in the colony.

Photo: An Adelie Penguin Colony with adults and chicks; two adults perform ecstatic displays