South Georgia – Salisbury Plain

South Georgia – Salisbury Plain

King Penguins – Fur Seals – Elephant Seals – Snowy Sheathbill – Huge King Penguin Colony with Juveniles – Molting – Swimming

Elephant Seals in the foreground, Fur Seals farther in the distance, King Penguins all around

And some Fur Seals who think they are the bosses

Snowy Sheathbill – This little bird is pure white and rather small. As you can see, it is not afraid of the huge Fur Seal and it seems the seal is not at all concerned about the bird. In the next photo you can see a dry bag. We all used dry bags to transport our photo equipment from the ship to the shore via zodiac because lots of water sprayed by and into the zodiac on the ride. Ashore we put all our dry bags in a designated spot and held them down with rocks. So, in the third photo you can see the little bird being very curious about the photo equipment. And finally I guess he thought it is a microphone!

More Fur Seals

And even though they are big and heavy, they can move very fast.

The swimming King Penguin

Water ballet?

This huge King Penguin colony has an estimated 60,000 penguins living there on Salisbury Plain.

Note the juveniles, the brown fuzzy guys. They are about to lose that brown fuzz and finally look like penguins. But the process of losing the fur is quite uncomfortable for them.

The adult King Penguins also molt (lose their feathers). Evidently they cannot swim while in the process of molting so they are hungry because they cannot be in the water getting fish for dinner.

Here are a few photos of a King Penguin in the process of molting. And then finally a photo of millions of the molted feathers that are scattered on the ground.