THE ADELIE PENGUIN. 47 



While camping out on Cape Royds, within easy sight and sound of the penguin 

 rookery, we used to think that there was a lull in the almost ceaseless clatter of the 

 rookery about noon or shortly after. Except for this, it was continuous night and 

 day. The birds have a different note of anger amongst themselves a more disjointed 

 cry beginning with distinct syllables " ah ah ah," rather than a growl. The call 

 note, again, is " Aark," or " Caark," and once heard in the pack ice or at sea is never to 

 be forgotten. It is best imitated by blowing sharply on the edge of a blade of sword 

 grass held between the ball of the thumb and the index fingers, as schoolboys do, or 

 else by sharply drawing the thumb and finger down a resinous piece of string attached 

 to the head of a little cardboard drum. I was suddenly brought back to the Antarctic 

 in the streets of London by hearing a penguin's call note at my elbow one day, as I 

 passed a man on the curbstone selling cork and feather cocks mounted on such a card- 

 board drum as I describe. The mimicry was exact, though unintentional. I bought 

 the article in question, and a little practice brought it to perfection. The lull 

 which I mentioned as occurring at noon is due to perhaps more birds than usual 

 having gone to sea. Sleep is snatched when and where it is needed, and birds may be 

 found sleeping in the rookery at all times of the day or night, as well as on the icefloe 

 miles away from anywhere. 



The voice of the chicken is a whistling pipe, very shrill, very pathetic and very 

 aggravatingly persistent one would think to the adults, who often show their annoyance 

 by scolding their infants roundly. As the nestling grows, the pipe gets louder and 

 more shrill and more persistent until the down is shed, and the bird undertakes its own 

 responsibilities. It then drops the whine and takes on the cry of the adult, a little 

 more shrill and somewhat quavering at first, but gradually merging into the full-voiced 

 cry of the adult. 



The first arrivals at a large rookery such as Cape Crozier have naturally the choice 

 of nesting sites, and on the 19th October, 1903, when only a few dozen birds had just 

 arrived, we found them scattered over the rookery at immense distances apart. What 

 advantages the sites chosen had over any others it was hard to see, except that from 

 the highest part of the rookery to the very shore, and as far as it reached from east to 

 west, the one object seemed to be to avoid proximity to any neighbour. Knowing how 

 desperately crowded the place would be within a week, we could not fail to notice 

 this. Sunny ridges had perhaps a preference, but not wholly by any means. There 

 was a company of four or five among the hummocks of ice and stranded bergs on shore, 

 but the rest were exceedingly busy, each one gathering stones into a heap, upon which it 

 shortly sat to form a nest. One or two birds "only had paired as yet, the majority were 

 widely separate and intent only on the amassing of private property. Not one of these 

 nests contained an egg, nor indeed was an egg to be found throughout the rookery 

 even ten days later when there were many thousands of birds all mated, and the 

 whole rookery crowded to its utmost limits with well-made nests, each surmounted 

 by a sitting penguin (fig. 35, p. 48). 



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