As I walked there were penguins around me, following parallel paths and some walking towards me, passing very close as they made their way back to the sea for more food for their ever hungry chicks, sometimes they stopped to consider me carefully before moving on. What impresses me when I am close to them is what a big bird they are, standing nearly 1 metre tall. This is about as good as it gets, walking on sea ice studded with icebergs and sharing my path with Emperor Penguins.

I love the sound of an Emperor penguin colony, from a distance it is almost a gentle cooing, the adults and chicks can only recognise each other by their voices and the constant trumpeting of the adults and insistent cheeps of the chicks tells you that there is a lot going on. The penguins were curious about the tall creatures in the yellow jackets and some of them came very close to inspect us, almost always stopping just short of investigating us with their beaks, but all you had to do was sit on the ice to draw a crowd of penguins, both adult and chicks, the curiosity was flowing both ways.

ANT1609-06	ANT1613-01	ANT1611-03
ANT1612-17	ANT1622-01	ANT1621-14
ANT1619-01	ANT1619-08	ANT1612-06
ANT1613-02	ANT1612-15	ANT1615-12
ANT1615-11	ANT1621-05	ANT1621-02
ANT1625-03	ANT1620-20	ANT1620-14
ANT1622-04	ANT1622-11	ANT1623-02
ANT1623-08	ANT1623-15	ANT1626-02
ANT1625-08	ANT1623-17	ANT1624-13
ANT1624-16	ANT1625-14	ANT1627-03
ANT1626-08	ANT1626-09	ANT1626-21
ANT1620-05	ANT1610-16	ANT1627-20