I just got back from R&R, and I’ve heard today is national penguin day, so I wanted to share some pictures. I also have pictures from a hike around Castle Rock and some of the other wildlife at McMurdo, but today is just Penguins. Fair warning, a group of penguins is called a waddle, as hard as that is to type with a straight face.

First off, a bit of McMurdo geography:

You can see McMurdo, Scott Base, The ObHill loop, and Hut point on the map. Hut point is off to the left where the blue and green trail meet. Both Hut point and the ObHill loop had breaks in the sea Ice where Minke whales were surfacing, and penguins were going in and out of the water. Some of the best penguin shots were over by Hut Point – the overlook was close enough to the water.

Almost all of these shots are of Adélie penguins – they are maybe 2ft tall, and they come in fairly large waddles.

The Adélies really liked to pretend that they were heading for the water and then turn away at the last second. Once one jumped in, they would all get in the water pretty quick though.

Over on the Ob Hill Loop trail, there was a much larger break in the ice, and a very large number of Adélies hanging out, though you were further from them.

Penguins were much more graceful jumping into the water and swimming than they were waddling on land.

They also had fun playing with each other out of the water. Or they wanted their personal space. One of the two.

Lastly, near Scott base, at what I think was more than a mile away, there were some emperor penguins out on the sea ice (southeast of Scott base on the map). I didn’t get the best photo, but here it is:

If you want even more penguin pics (really, too many), you can find them in this Flickr album: PENGUINS.