46 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
Penguins we were too far from our nearest rookeries to visit them day by day, or even 
week by week, yet we were lucky in meeting with the more interesting stages of the 
bird’s development. They begin to arrive at Cape Adare as early as the middle of 
September, but the more southern rookeries at Cape Crozier were tenanted only by 
a few dozen stragglers even so late as October 19th in 1903. In 1902, not a bird had 
arrived even on October 24th. Within a week of these dates, however, they numbered 
many thousands, the nesting sites had been appropriated, the stones and pebbles with 
which they make their nests had been freely fought for, and were now by theft being 
as freely circulated from one end of the rookery to the other. 
The penguins’ courtship was in full swing, and on every nest squatted the lady 
while her knight slept standing at her side, or woke to pay her the attention that his 
chivalry suggested. There are many misunderstandings in these colonies over the 
misappropriation of property. The nests were all too close to one another, and he had 
the biggest nest who could most successfully annex his neighbour's pebbles and prevent 
his own from being stolen. Needless to say, there was hardly a stone of his nest but 
had been taken from someone else. 
The battles royal between the males have been so many times described that 
little is left for me to say. The females, sitting on their nests, have quarrels with 
their neighbours, but whereas they followed the time-honoured custom of fighting with 
their bills, attempting to cut out each the other’s tongue, the males fought chiefly with 
their weight and flippers, and the blows resounded afar as they were hailed down upon 
the unlucky wight with a torrent of abuse. But plucky they certainly are, for again 
and again, when overborne and forced to give way a bit on all fours, the beaten 
individual will be seen to turn and confront his persecutor on his legs again, his eyes 
aflame, his ruffle up, his chest out, and his flippers working like a windmill. 
The voice of the Adélie Penguin has, by every writer on the subject, been given 
the attention it demands. It is a voice which cannot be ignored, especially when one 
hears it flowing freely from the throats of many thousands in such a rookery as that at 
Cape Crozier or Cape Adare. If one walks among the nests, the majority either swear 
persistently under their breath or shout in a loud harsh voice. The noise is almost 
unceasing. From a distance it is like a whistling roar, and when, from the cliffs of 
Cape Adare, we looked down upon the 200 acres swarming with shouting penguins and 
their whistling, piping chicks, one was reminded of nothing so much as a rink with a 
thousand chattering skaters ; there was the same ringing roar that such a gathering 
would have in the Crystal Palace. 
It is hard to give a description of the individual cries. They begin at one’s 
approach in a low, hoarse, swearing growl, which gets gradually louder and higher in 
pitch, while the bird bridles up with ruffled crest in front of his swearing spouse. 
Then, making a wild dash at the intruder’s legs, he seizes such garments as he can 
reach and unmercifully batters his shins with a rain of blows that have been well 
compared to the rattle of a boy’s stick along some corrugated iron palings. 
