This past week was a busy one for us. We visited three sites: Cape Bird, Cape Royds, and Cape Barne. All but the last had active Adelie penguin colonies as well as abandoned sites. Cape Barne had one large abandoned colony that must have numbered about 4000 to 5000 breeding birds at one time. First, though, we flew to Cape Bird where we met a group of New Zealand researchers studying the penguins in that area. The ‘kiwis’, or New Zealanders, also have a strong Antarctic research program and have a station near McMurdo that is active year-round. At Cape Bird, they had a nice hut that we were invited to share with their group. It made our visit much more comfortable and we enjoyed their company for a few days.
Cape Bird has three large Adelie penguin colonies located along the coast, each about a mile apart. The chicks at these colonies are now getting quite large. They are forming crèches, or groups of chicks that are left alone by their parents who still will visit periodically to find and feed their young (see figure). We were at the most northern of the three colonies and collected two sediment samples there, one in the active colony and one in an abandoned pebble mound nearby. Both were rich and produced lots of bones, eggshell, and feather fragments. The pit in the active colony also exposed an older, buried pebble layer below the thick layer of modern pebbles (see figure). We also walked down to the middle colony where an 8000-yr old colony was reported in the 1980’s. We located this abandoned site and completed one test pit there. It also produced lots of material and we’ll have to wait until later to know if the deposits we excavated are as old as those reported in the past.
All this work was completed in one long day (23 Jan.) as we were scheduled to leave the next day for Cape Royds. However, foggy weather at McMurdo prevented helicopters from flying so we had to wait until the day after (25 Jan.) to get out. We spent our time looking over the penguin colony and helping the kiwis with some of their work. We also saw a group of Orcas offshore, moving with the ice flows and breaching (jumping out of the water part way).
The next day we reached Cape Royds by noon. This is a beautiful spot as well, with an active penguin colony numbering about 4000 breeding pairs. Two American women were here studying the penguins. Also located here is another historic hut built in 1907 by Ernest Shackleton, a British explorer, and his men (see figure). It was used as their base while Shackleton made an attempt to reach the South Pole. He failed to do so, but came within 90 miles of his goal. The hut still has lots of artifacts around it, including stacks of canned goods just as they left them. The preservation here is quite good.
At Royds we excavated two more areas, one in the active colony and one in an abandoned pebble mound (see figure). Both sites were relatively shallow, only 15-20 cm, and appear to represent only a brief or relatively recent occupation of the area. Still, it’s an interesting site and again offshore we saw lots of whales, especially minkes, feeding along the ice edge.
The next day (26 Jan.), we hiked two miles south to Cape Barne. Here, I was informed, was an abandoned colony that had not yet been studied. The hike over was scenic, with Mt. Erebus in the background, and it was a nice sunny day with little wind (see figure). One of the American researchers here, Sophie Webb (who also is the author of an award-winning children’s book on Antarctica, ‘My Year with the Penguins’) showed us where the abandoned site was located. I was quite impressed with it since it was large and appeared very old by the dry dusty sediments I scooped up. It also was very rich in bone, eggshell, and feathers. Our test pit produced an abundance of these remains, including an entire penguin chick mummy, dried out like it died perhaps 4000 or more years ago (see figure). It was an exciting find along with other remains in this site.
We hiked back to Cape Royds later that day and helped the other researchers break down their camp. Both our groups were scheduled to leave the next day and we had to have most things packed up and ready to go for the helicopters. The weather stayed nice and we returned to McMurdo on the morning of 27 Jan. As before, we have lots of samples to process in the lab and we have been washing and sorting them since we returned. We will leave again this week to visit several other sites. So far, I’m very pleased with the amount of data we’ve recovered this season—it has been quite successful even if we don’t collect anything else.