Penguin Island: Life and Survival in the South Atlantic

It's September when the first parties of penguins come battling through the breakers. Encased in their thick blubber, they're proof against waves that would smash a man to pieces within minutes. This vast colony on one small island is over six miles long and contains more than three million birds, not only penguins. The penguins share the site with at least 200,000 black-browed albatrosses, as well as several thousand rock and king shags. It may come as a surprise that these wildlife wonders in the South Atlantic are British and are therefore as much a British responsibility as the people who live on these islands. In terms of wildlife conservation, the islands have been ignored by successive British governments and they are not by any means safe from threats and disturbances in the future. So it's high time Britain recognized its own wonderful wildlife asset and took steps to protect it. The Falklands lie 300 miles off the coast of South America in the South Atlantic. They're only 400 miles northeast of Cape Horn and the same distance from the South Pole that London is from the North. The entire population of the Falklands is under 2,000 British people. Half of them live in the capital, Port Stanley, the rest on scattered sheep farms. The Falklands were occupied by Britain just over 150 years ago. Today they're claimed by Argentina because of an earlier settlement by the Spanish Imperial Navy. Now this survival program is not about the sovereignty issue, it's about the rights of the original natural inhabitants, mainly the penguins. Here Britain has a heavy responsibility of which so far she seems to be little aware. The Falklands consist of two main islands, east and west, and hundreds of smaller ones. It was on two of these, on New Island and Steeple Jason, that our team filmed the story of Penguin Island. Steeple Jason is in the extreme west of the group, it's uninhabited. The island is about seven miles long with a central ridge of high crest. It's completely undisturbed and has a total population of around five million, all birds. The survival expedition arrived off Steeple Jason in the motor vessel Forest, captained by Jack Sollis. The Forest carries supplies between the islands and is almost the only means of communication with remote parts of the group. Our team was equipped to stay marooned for at least 10 weeks. Some Falklanders politely suggested they were crazy. No one had ever stayed on Steeple Jason for more than a few nights since they grazed sheep there in 1968. Why should anyone want to stay on such a place just to film penguins? More particularly, why should two girls want to maroon themselves there? Most of wildlife photographer Cindy Buxton's previous films have been made in the warmer climate of Africa. Her assistant was her friend Annie Price. The Royal Marines and the crew of Forest helped carry the girls' supplies ashore. Then they set off for what was to be their home for the next 10 weeks. Home was a partly derelict tin hut used long ago by the sheep herders. They quickly discovered they had neighbours, a family of upland geese. When the Forest sailed away, Cindy's only link with the outside world was by radio. Despite the fact that their peace had been disturbed, the natives proved friendly. A Magellan, or Jackass penguin, had its nesting burrow right in the back garden. Driftwood provided all the fuel needed for cooking and for heating the bathwater. Fresh water was never any problem. It rains even more here than it does in Britain. Domestic chores had to be fitted in on days when the weather and the light were too bad for filming. There are four species of penguins in the Falklands. Kings, Magellans, Gentoos and Rockhoppers. Gentoos and Rockhoppers are far the most numerous, so they are the stars of this story. You guessed it, these are Rockhoppers. Each jump, with feet close together, takes a Rockhopper about one foot forward. This method of progress, aided by sharp nails in the toes, is an adaptation for coming ashore and climbing steep rocky slopes. They porpoise towards the landing ledges, sometimes leaping four feet in the air, hoping to land on their feet, but often flopping on their bellies. Super slow motion shows how little belly flopping worries them. Rockhoppers nest on top of the cliffs in areas unused by other penguin species, so their ability to ascend and descend rugged gullies and rocky paths gives them an advantage. Once they reach the top, they have the nesting site to themselves, at least as far as other penguins are concerned. High up, they're also safe from raiding seals. Rockhoppers are the noisiest of the penguin species, especially at the start of the nesting season. They're one of the most appealing penguins. The gold crest and the bright red eye give them a somewhat comic dignity. The crest is only fully resplendent on the adult birds. Many of the colonies are shared by other sea birds. King Shags sometimes nest side by side with the Rockhoppers, but they tend largely to keep to their own areas. Their courtship is far quieter and more subtle than the penguins. The Rockhopper's most numerous neighbours are the black-browed albatrosses. Albatross courtship has a gentler, almost tender quality, unusual among birds. The gen 2 penguins make their landfall at much the same time, though their lifestyle is different. They not only choose shelving sandy beaches to come ashore, but they use quite different nesting sites to which they waddle rather than hop. After all, there's not much advantage in hopping over level ground. The distinguishing mark of the gentoo is that white headscarf. No one is sure, but gentoo may come from the Spanish word granitos, meaning little man. Like the Rockhoppers, they nest in much the same site year after year. The long march to the colony is always orderly, determined and unhurried. Within 10 days of the first party's landing, the colony is full. Nest building with penguins is largely a ritual affair. In the gentoo's case, it's sometimes a matter of balancing small stones. Quarrelling neighbours don't do too much for one's concentration. The love song of the gentoo, indeed of any penguin, is a raucous bray. He, or maybe she, finally succeeded. As with the Rockhoppers, the preliminaries of mating and setting up house are noisy and cantankerous. Pairs form and break up, often to reform. If both have survived the winter at sea, previous year's partnerships are sometimes renewed. At last the females settle down to brood their eggs. Now where did I lay that egg? Aha, there we are. In the Rockhopper and Albatross colony on steeplejayson, courtship and nesting is getting into full swing too. Rockhoppers lay two eggs. Birds, whose chicks have to leave the nest soon after they hatch, produce very large eggs, and penguins are no exception. The egg has to be big to contain all the nourishment a precocious chick needs. Outsized eggs take an awful lot of laying. The second egg will be even more of an effort. It's usually slightly larger. As soon as the second egg is laid, the female starts incubating, but only for a few hours. Then the male takes over. Penguins are able to drink seawater, dispersing the salt through glands in the head. At nesting time fresh water is very welcome, and the frequent rainstorms produce plenty of that. This is not a freak clutch. Some female has laid that extra egg in the wrong nest. The householder guards it jealously from an intruder, perhaps the real owner. Penguins have no land predators. This could be one of the reasons why they've lost the normal use of their wings. They've no need to escape by flying, but at nesting times their eggs and young are constantly under attack from the air, mainly by the skewers who watch for an unguarded nest. Most nesting colonies face two main dangers. First, attacked by bird predators. Second, really bad weather. The penguins have to cope with both, but the weather hardly worries them at all. Adult penguins are proof against the worst the Falklands can throw at them, and something particularly nasty is at this moment rolling in from the southern ocean. The Falklands rarely see heavy snow. When it comes, the penguins probably rather enjoy it. With its thick layers of fat, a penguin problem is not how to keep warm, but how to stay cool. The Falklands climate is not very severe. Much of the year is not unlike England in the mild winter. Wet and windy is the usual forecast. Snow seldom lingers for long. Once nesting has started, the off-duty rock hoppers must make the long journey down from the clifftop colony to go fishing. At first, the well-worn path leads down between the hammocks of tassic grass. Once the tassic has been negotiated, the rock hopping starts. This colony on New Island is at least 200 feet above the sea. Rock hoppers changing over nesting duties often make the journey up and down every day. At the steepest points along the trail, the rocks bear the scars of maybe thousands of years of penguins' progress. The grooves are made by the rock hopper's sharp nails. Some points along the way definitely need slippery surface signs. The trail has been blazed by countless generations of rock hoppers. Long tradition has also established the best points from which to launch oneself into the sea. The trick is to judge when the wave reaches its highest point. Not that it matters very much if you get it all wrong. You can't help feeling that for the rock hoppers, it's all a bit of a game. Not far away on the same island, the gentoos are coming ashore from fishing expeditions to take their turn at the nest. Like small black torpedoes, they dart straight for the sandy beach, surfacing at the very last instant, just before running aground. The first party begins this long walk to the colony, while more and more come porpoising in behind. Porpoising not only enables the penguins to breathe, it probably confuses the predatory seals. As in a shoal of fish, there's safety in numbers. The touching thing about penguins is how completely trusting they are once they're ashore. They trust human beings because since the early 19th century, when sealers occasionally raided the Falklands for skins and penguin oil, wildlife has had little to fear for man. Falkland sheep farmers are, in the main, rather proud of the rock hoppers and gentoos making their way to the colonies on their land. However, this is local and voluntary protection that depends on individual goodwill, and there's no guarantee this will last forever. So in the long run, the Falkland penguin must have legal protection. For the rock hoppers, low tide produces some landing problems. It exposes thick beds of tangled seaweed called giant kelp. So the rock hoppers suddenly find themselves in a kind of seaweed maze where hopping doesn't get you anywhere. The cunning ones wait for a big wave to bring them within range of a sloping rock ledge. Rock hoppers returning from the sea often do a very peculiar thing that no one has so far explained. Having been in seawater for a number of days, they immediately take a swim in a quiet tidal pool. It's quite possible they just enjoy a tranquil dip after being buffeted about in the surf. After the bathe, they take a brief rest on the flat shelves around the landing area, particularly on a sunny day. Then once again, they have to face that long climb up to the top of the cliff. Some colonies are as much as 500 feet above the sea. In these huge mixed seabird colonies, the team found they were completely accepted by the residents, including the nesting king shags. A shore the birds had no fear of predators, but as we'll soon discover, the ocean holds many dangers for them. In the Falklands, sea lions are the adult penguins' only predators. The gentoos seem particularly vulnerable when landing or setting off to sea. The gentoos appear fully aware when there's a submarine menace patrolling like a U-boat just offshore. They move further up the beach. They simply have to go to sea to feed themselves, and the sea lion watches, knowing that sooner or later they'll just have to make a dash for it. The target is usually a penguin returning to shore, perhaps because he's tired and therefore slower. But another mass of returning gentoos distracts the hunter and this victim escapes. The U-boat turns to lie in wait for an easier target. The sea lion, the hunters are invariably bulls, doesn't have long to wait. The incredible thing is that the sea lions very seldom eat their catch. It seems to be a lethal kind of play. The only winners are the giant petrels who hang around. Immediately they spot a sea lion hunting. That oil stick, amazingly, is the product of one dismembered penguin. The action of both killer and victim is so fast and so fluid that it can only be captured in super slow motion. The whims that give the seas around Cape Horn their deservedly dreadful reputation are no strangers to the fortunes. When they strike, they give little warning. So what does a penguin do in a force 10 gale? The answer is, he carries on regardless. The identical spot, only 24 hours later, as suddenly as the winds come, they vanish. The penguins take it all in their rock hopping stride. The time is fast approaching when the first chicks will hatch up. At that moment it's usually the males who are brooding the eggs, so these sleek well-fed penguins returning with full bellies from the sea are most likely to be females. As soon as the rockhopper chicks dry after hatching, the parents feed them on regurgitated seafood. In one part of the colony, the black-browed albatrosses easily outnumber the rockhoppers. The albatrosses were equally relaxed about Cindy filming them. They start to nest before the penguins and their young develop more slowly. Their fledglings will still be there when the young penguins have left for the sea. In their cone-shaped mud nests, the albatrosses have a less exacting task than the rockhopper parents. They only lay one egg. Their single chick is less vocal and demanding than the young penguins. In feeling sorry for their victims, we mustn't forget that the predators have young to feed too. Under this rocky overhang, a striated caracara, or Johnny Rook, is nesting. Prey and plenty of it is what a caracara needs to feed his own family. Young penguins fill the bill very nicely. One caracara chick is very much bigger than his sibling. Watch how he gets all the food. That's often the way with birds of prey. The smaller bird probably won't survive. Those relentless and successful nest robbers, the skewers, have families to feed too. Eggs are off the menu now, but the chicks are very much on. The skewer young leave the nest shortly after hatching. The parents hide them among the rocks until they're ready to feed them. Watch how this chick is made to work for its meal. Skewers will scavenge any dead bird they find in the colony, and sadly they'll also kill any young penguin rash enough to wander away from the protection of its parents. These skewer young have spotted their parents' kill. One advances confidently while the other, who may have hatched a day or two later, hides uncertainly. The timid chick still begs for food. The more advanced one tucks in like the true predator it is already growing up to be. Everyone's chicks are growing fast now. Throughout the whole huge mixed colony, young of all ages must be continuously fed. King shag, black-browed albatross, rockhopper penguin, they're all cramming seafood into their young. In this nest, the situation is rapidly getting out of control, with the chick as big as its parents. Whatever the size of their offspring, penguin parents are remarkably conscientious, giving them warmth and protection even after they've outgrown the situation. As the chicks develop a sense of balance, they creep out from under their parents and stand beside them. They're so full of food they look like little beach balls. The next stage is for the young rockhoppers to form up in groups of the same age, and the parents go off to fish, leaving them on their own. The young seem to be able to find enough protection from skewers just by huddling together. For the first few days, they'll return to their nesting areas to be fed. On the open ground of the gentoo colony, the system is rather different. When the parents return from the sea, the young birds have to chase them before they get fed. It's a kind of training for the time soon to come when they'll have to pursue their own food in the ocean. Feeding chases are an important stage of their education, though they do look extremely comic to human eyes, especially when seen in slowed-up action. King shags make their young work for their food too, though in a slightly different way. Their chicks must pester their parents with their beaks before they get fed. Some young shags don't appear to know the difference between a full crop and a loaded camera. The last stage of the young penguins' development before heading for the sea is to shed all their baby flood. A penguin has more feathers than any other bird, and when they're all being shed at once, the result is like a snowstorm. Even those flipper-like wings are covered with feathers, though they look more like small scales. At this stage, they're fed by their parents much less frequently. They're beginning to resemble the adults. The golden eyebrows are developing nicely, but they won't come to their full glory for at least a year. This one is obviously a late developer. Now, when Cindy walks through the colony, the young penguins were slightly apprehensive, but even so, they gave no sign of panic. And here is the finished product, sleek and ready to start out for its real home, the sea. The young are fed less and less now, so that the incentive of hunger is there to persuade them seawards. A bathe in a feather-strewn pool on the way may be a poor second best, but at least it provides a first swimming lesson. These are mostly adults, you can tell them by their magnificent golden eyebrow tufts. The young venture further and further each day, instinctively using the powers trodden by every rockhopper for centuries before them. An adult is leading this party. Parents look for their own young along the trail to give them the bare minimum of food necessary. At this time, the adults need a good deal of food themselves. Once their young have finally gone to sea, they'll molt their own feathers. It's the first chance they've had to do so. Molting means that they'll no longer be waterproof and able to fish, so once they've got rid of their families, they face two or three weeks fast. Down on the flat ledges closer to sea, a good deal of argument still goes on as parents seek out their own children and chase away strangers. Newly-fledged shags look surprised to find themselves in such a quarrelsome gathering. Now it's a question of plucking up courage to take that first plunge. Some of the shags have already made it. One brave young rockhopper leads the way and away they go. On the cliff top, the colony is now empty of rockhoppers. The only occupants are the photographers and the slowly mature black-browed albatross young. What swimming is to penguins, soaring is to an albatross. Both are masters of their respective arts. It's just that an albatross needs longer to acquire the skills necessary to travel the stormy southern ocean. Parents still feed the fully-fledged young even while they're taking their final flying lessons without actually leaving the ground. On dusk or early morning, they will follow their parents out to sea and become masters of the wind and then the colony finally will be deserted. The last young rockhoppers to molt make their way to the sea's edge. The young of this season won't disappear from sight of land immediately. They'll stay close to shore for a while, gaining confidence in the surf, learning all the skills of diving and swimming, and most important, how to catch krill, squid, and small fish. You can almost share the joy that a young penguin feels on first contact with the ocean. Next year they may come back to the area where they were hatched, but they won't be ready to breed until they're at least three. One or two bold ones may climb the rocky path and approach the colony out of curiosity that they won't dare to enter. They're certain to be attacked and driven off by the adults, so mostly they'll just hang around, sunbathing, and swim. Penguins live a long time, 25 or 30 years maybe, so if they survive the perils of the sea, they can afford to wait a bit before they start raising their own young. We've talked about threats to future generations of Falkland penguins. Well, what are they? Here's one, and a familiar one at that, an oiled penguin. There's a strong chance that oil will be found between the Falklands and South America. If so, then oil spills present a terrible threat to the penguin. Again, most countries have declared 200 mile fishing limits. There is still only a three mile limit around the Falklands. Outside this, foreign trawlers are already sweeping up the abundant fish with unknown long-term effects for the penguin. The threats, we admit, are in the future, but environmental threats have a nasty habit of moving overnight into the present. Might not Britain make the world aware of the importance of the Falklands and our penguins by declaring the Bird Islands a national park? At present, Britain doesn't possess a national park worthy of the name. Here is a supreme opportunity to protect the one natural paradise that we in Britain are still responsible for.