Penguins Moved From Science Station Site

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28169, 7 January 1957, Page 6

Penguins Moved From Science Station Site

A rookery of Adelie penguins occupied the one spot amid a world of ice and rock where the joint United States and New Zealand scientific station could be established at Cape Hallett, on th? northern Victoria Land coast of the Antarctic, according to a dispatch from the United States Coast Guard icebreaker, Northwind.

Nesting had advanced to a point where all the fertile eggs had been hatched and the gawky potbellied young birds had grown enough to be handled without ill effects. It was decided to evacuate the penguin families from an area 100 yards square—sufficient for the proposed base—and reestablish them in other parts of the rookery. A senior biologist of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Mr Carl P. Ecklund, who will be chief scientist at the Knox coast base, supervised the transfer. An international volunteer crew of United States Navy Seabees and civilian scientists set about the job.

In addition to Americans and New Zealanders, who will mair the base, there was a group of

Australians bound for the Knox coast on the Northwind. While the Seabees constructed a supposedly penguin-proof fence around the base site, the rest of ‘he party, “feeling uncomfortably like storm troopers” began amid frenzied and deafening squawks an<j screams of protest to gather the young into baskets, net the attendant parents, and carry the family groups to their new homes. The excitement of the move proved too much for the old birds which, when released, ran off screaming, abandoning their young to the ever-present predatory skuas. Every penguin colony, however, contains a number of childless adults constantly trying to appropriate the young of their more fortunate neighbours, so that the abandoned birds quickly found foster homes. At the end of a 36-hour storm, which sent ice floes and icebergs bearing down on the Northwind and the cargo ship, Arneb, which was holed in several places at the water line, raucous and derisive cries floated across to the ships. The base site was once again black with penguins standing! on the Seabees’ wind-flattened fence.