80 “TERRA NOVA” EXPEDITION. 
each couple upon their clutch, the chicks are gradually massed into little groups, 
or eréches, and each créche is guarded by a few birds who keep a good look-out on 
the chicks to prevent them from straying and so hecoming an easy prey to the 
skuas, while the rest of the parents make journeys to the water for food. 
The reason why the parents pool their offspring in this way is evidently because 
the voracious appetites of the chicks, as they get bigger, impose too great a demand 
on the industry of the parents, who like to spend a certain part of the day in 
playing games and enjoying themselves in the water. Hence, instead of one or 
other of each couple remaining constantly in charge, three or four remain to guard 
groups of chicks varying in number from twelve or so to large masses of many 
dozens, who are kept in a close clump by those who remain for the purpose, the 
rest of the parents being free to leave them and share the duty of providing food 
for the whole. 
Before these créches are formed, | think no parent feeds any chicks but its 
own, though it may pass the whole length of the rookery on the way from the 
water to its nest; and later, the old birds appear to remain faithful to their own 
créches, because although they are seen to be pestered by wandering and starving 
chicks, piping shrilly and plaintively for food, it is rare to see them yield their 
loads of food to the poor little beggars, many of whom, growing weaker, daily fall 
a prey to the ever-watchful skuas. In fact, if each colony of parents did not work 
solely for its own créche, it is obvious that the chicks up the heights and at the back 
of the rookery would come off second best, and many of them starve, whereas these are 
just as well nourished as those nearer the water. 
It is worth remarking here that until the créches are formed, parents, as a rule, 
rigidly exclude the offspring of other birds from their nests, and I have seen little 
chicks who had lost themselves, mortally pecked by strange mothers whose protection 
they sought. 
9.—DEPARTURE FROM THE ROOKERY. 
One morning Priestley came into the hut and told me that the penguins were 
“ drilling on the sea-ice,” and that I had better come out and look at them. I went 
with him to the ice-foot, and this is what we saw. 
Many thousands of Adélies were on the sea-ice between the ice-foot and the open- 
water leads, then some quarter of a mile distant. Near the ice-foot they were 
congregating into little bodies of a few dozen, whilst farther out near the water, massed 
bands, some thousands strong, stood silent and motionless. Both the small and the 
large bands kept an almost rectangular formation, whilst in each band all the birds 
faced the same way, though different bands faced in different directions. 
As we watched, it became evident that something very unusual was going on. 
First, from one of the small bands a single bird suddenly appeared, ran a few yards in 
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