A king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) sits on an egg in the Hound Bay colony on South Georgia. Getting this close to a penguin means finding out exactly how bad they smell!

Two king penguins walk around the edge of the St Andrews Bay colony. The glacier in the back is retreating; over a kilometre of this glacier has melted in the last 20 years!

Two female Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) moulting on the beach in Hound Bay, South Georgia.

Some king penguin chicks nearing moult. Early explorers and biologists thought that these were a separate species of penguin; the Woolly penguin.

Two king penguins stand on their own at sunset. Penguins are dependent on land and sea, which makes them more susceptible to habitat change. Penguins that need ice to breed are currently doing badly in the face of climate change. As what they eat changes in the face of fishing and climate change, the problems are likely to get worse.

Adult king penguins sit on eggs in St Andrews bay. Last year’s chicks are the large brown birds in the colony. King penguins take 14-16 months to completely raise a chick. The brown chicks will fledge in a month or two and go to sea to feed themselves. King penguins start breeding at about age 3.

A king penguin messes up the final approach. It lands badly at St Andrews bay after a foraging trip. King penguin foraging trips can take about 17 days when they are breeding.

An antarctic tern (Sterna vittata) showing mobbing behaviour. Skuas and Giant petrels eat tern eggs, so terns start attack anything that comes within several hundred metres of the egg. The egg is well camouflaged, so early mobbing means that it is very hard for predators to find the eggs.

Two macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus) come ashore at Fairy Point on Bird Island, South Georgia. These breeding adults will have been at sea all day finding krill to feed their young. An average macaroni penguin with a chick will make about 400 dives per day to depths of up to 120 metres! Other penguins dive even deeper; the Australian Antarctic Division tagged an Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) that dived to 565 metres!

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