Ululations Have Been Increasing

David Ainley reports that he has just arrived at Cape Royds, where it is egg laying season. Here is the great surprise: penguin populations are going up! David's lyrical essay in Antarctica: Life on the Ice is about contemplating the future of Adélie Penguins. There is a webcam at Cape Royds, which you should not miss.

David introduced me to his penguins at Cape Royds in 2004-2005. He even let me pick one up--they are the size and weight of a large football--while he injected it with a pit tag. Needless to say, I was overcome by the cuteness of penguins. Two of my essays about my time on the ice posted here on the blog and my essay in the anthology describe the miraculous life of penguins that I experienced at Cape Royds.

Here is David's description of what they are researching, titled "Ululations Have Been Increasing":

16 November 2007

We have set out in the 12th year of a project in which we seek to

understand the answer to the question of why Adélie Penguin populations

have been increasing in the Ross Sea since

the early 1980s, and why the

increase has mostly been exhibited by smaller colonies. The Ross Sea

contains about 38% of the 6 million breeding Adélie Penguins in the

world, and 3 of its largest colonies (3 of 6 exceeding 120,000 breeding

pairs). We know about this increase from the frequent and, in some

cases, annual counts being made of the colonies by biologists of

Landcare Research New Zealand, using aerial photography.

The  reason it is taking us so long in this quest for answers to our questions is that we need to accumulate the individual histories of know-age birds, acquiring information for each such as year of hatching, year of first breeding, and subsequent breeding success. We also need to know the proportion of each age group that survives from one year to the next, and whether or not as young adults they return to the colony of their origin or emigrate elsewhere to nest at another colony. We’ve been doing this by banding chicks (metal band with unique set of numbers) at 4 colonies every year: Cape Crozier (150,000 pairs), Beaufort Island (45,000 pairs), Cape Bird (40,000 pairs), and Cape Royds (4000 pairs). We spend a lot of time walking, with binoculars in hand, looking for penguins wearing bands at those 4 colonies. They don’t first come back for a visit until 2 years old, and they don’t begin to breed until, on average 4 or 5 years of age. The penguins reveal their secrets slowly, and so we must be patient. We are pleased that folks at the National Science Foundation, which funds our project, are patient, too.