A Special Gift

[Norm Dulak]

On a recent trip to Antarctica, Linda and I photographed some Gentoo Penguins.

Linda captured an image of one penguin with what appeared to be a dark piece of wood in its beak. Later, she photographed the same bird delivering the piece of wood to its nest.

Prior to that, I decided to shoot a short video clip, using my Nikon D7000 camera, of a penguin colony above the nest that Linda photographed. Amazingly, the short video clip that I captured depicted the same Gentoo Penguin that delivered the piece of wood, stealing it from the occupant of another nest!

The action is shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdtV...JGUclnV0oVqIaF. If you are brash and look closely, you will see that another pair of penguins is mating in the background of the video clip. My apologies for inadvertently invading the privacy of those birds!

Norm

[John Chardine]

Very interesting to see Norm. Of course wood is in short supply in Antarctica but a remnant at a scientific station would not be hard to believe. The piece of wood or whatever it was, was unique and identifiable and you could track it between nests. Although I have never read the paper, there are reports of stones in a particular penguin nest being coloured with some paint, which made them traceable around the colony. Once so marked it apparently took no time at all for the coloured stones to be spread around the whole colony, courtesy of the various stone-stealers.