60 “TERRA NOVA” EXPEDITION. 
Abandoning this quest, he went straight up to another couple who were established 
near by, but seeing him coming, and evidently knowing what he was after, the cock 
immediately flew at him, and after a sharp fight im which each used his flippers 
energetically, the interloper was driven down the side of the knoll and away from the 
nests, when the victor returned to his hen. With the persistence of his kind, the 
newcomer came straight back to the nest, but weariness seemed to overcome him, for 
he settled himself for a doze, in which he continued until I was too cold to await 
further developments. 
Little knots of cocks were to be seen about the rookery thirsting for battle, and 
keeping a jealous guard on each other’s movements. 
Seeing that this was gomg on all around, one day I took out my camera and 
selected a typical case for illustration. 
A group of three cocks were engaged in bitter rivalry round a hen who was 
cowering on her scoop, in which she had been waiting. She appeared to be bewildered 
and agitated by the desperate behaviour of the cocks. In a further development of the 
scene, two of the cocks are shown squaring up for battle (Pl. IV). The combatants, 
hard at it, used their weight as they leant their breasts against one another, whilst 
they rained in the blows with their powerful flippers. At the end of the fight the 
victor rushed the vanquished cock before him, out of the crowd on to a patch of snow, 
on which he held him down and gave him a terrible hammering. When his conqueror 
at length left him he lay for some two minutes or so on the ground, his heaving 
breast alone showing that he was alive, so completely exhausted was he ; but recovering 
himself, he at length arose and crawled away, a damaged flipper hanging limply by 
his side, and he took no further part in the proceedings. 
It is only occasionally that one sees a cock so thoroughly beaten as this. As a 
rule when one of the combatants is too exhausted to go on, or has been knocked down, 
the other is content, and runs back to the hen or to the other cocks who may be 
gathered near her. When he has vanquished these, or got rid of them in some way, 
he generally goes up to the hen, who then feels or feigns some reluctance to take him, 
and I have seen a victorious cock run up to the hen’s scoop and squat in it whilst she 
pecked him cruelly, he merely hunching himself up with closed eyes, until she desisted, 
after which, with pretty overtures and soothing sounds, he pacified her, and soon they 
appeared to be mated permanently. 
As time went on, and the proportion of unmated to mated birds became smaller 
and smaller, the cocks watched each other more jealously, and began to go about in 
little batches in consequence, squabbling and fighting continually, and hindering one 
another in the quest for mates. 
Desperate as their encounters are, | think that one penguin never kills another. 
In many cases blood is drawn. I saw one with its eye put out, and that side of its 
beak (the right side) covered with blood, whilst the crimson mark of a blood-stained 
flipper across a white breast was no uncommon sight. 
