THE ADELIE PENGUIN. 57 



ments during the winter months in the pack. From Dr. Cook's account it is 

 evident that the general exodus from the pack ice to the breeding places in the 

 south, of all or most of the black-throated adults, led him to consider the white 

 throats of the immature birds to be a form of summer plumage. Obviously the sudden 

 relative increase in the number of immature birds in the pack ice when the adults left 

 his neighbourhood, at the commencement of the spring, misled him. His observation, 

 however, was borne out l)y our own as we made our way through the ice-pack in 

 January. There was a large proportion of white-throated immature birds there 

 which were certainly not breeding. Just a year old at the time, they had yet 

 another year to wait before they would join the southern migration to the nesting 

 colonies. Their home till then was the pack ice and the open sea. There were, also, in 

 the pack ice in January quite a number of adults, which presumably were not taking 

 part in the nesting of that particular season. 



From March, therefore, till the latter end of August, the Adelie Penguins, both 

 young and old, are scattered over the northern regions of the ice, where they spend the 

 winter, within easy reach of food and open water. They are also during this time 

 more or less gregarious in habit, though markedly less so than they are in the summer 

 season. 



Wherever in the pack ice they can depend upon an open lead of water, at the foot, 

 for example, of an iceberg, penguins may 1)e found in small companies, both young 

 and old, throughout the winter. Not so, however, farther south, where neither sign 

 nor trace of an Adelie can be found from March till the following spring, Septeml)er or 

 October. What is exactly the farthest point to the south in the Victoria quadi-aut at 

 which this bird may be found during the winter months, it is at present impossible to 

 say, but one may take their average limits from the beginning of October to the 

 end of February as lying between 61° and 78° 50' S. Lat, and from the beginning of 

 March to the end of September from 61° S. Lat. to the Antarctic Circle. Individual 

 birds have been known to wander, apparently lost, on the Great Ice Barrier some 60 or 

 70 miles from open water, but this was certainly accidental. The general migration 

 southward from the pack ice applies to the adults only, and occurs about the middle of 

 October. The general migration to the pack ice north again takes place in two 

 sections, that of the adults about the third week in January and that of the season's 

 young a week or two later. Such adults as we found at the nesting rookeries after 

 this were always in full moult, and one must believe that their moult had inconveniently 

 overtaken them before they started north, and so enforced their waiting till its com- 

 pletion. Amongst the more southern individuals the moult liegins in the latter end of 

 February; on Feb. 17th in 1904, when we landed at Cape Adare, we found a very 

 large number of adults, all moulting ; there was then not a single immature bird with 

 them. They had but one choice, either to leave the safety of the land on an icefloe, 

 which might break up and precipitate them into the water, or to remain safely where 

 they were on land and wait for a fortnight till their moult was completed, and then go 



