Their journey starts with the mass journey of male and female Penguins at the end of summer, 70km from the sea to a safer place inland where the ice is thick. The Males and Females match up and love each other before producing an egg. The female hands the egg over to the male to look after and if they don't do the transition properly then the egg will spend too long on the ice and "die". She takes the long walk back to the sea, which is further now as winter has created more ice. The father looks after the egg through the long, cold and dark winter, and when the sun starts to rise again some three months late or so, and the days get longer and warmer, the egg hatches. The father has a little bit of food stored away and gives the chick that. It will only sustain the chick for a day or two and in that time the mother must be back - such amazing timing! In this waiting time the father could end up not holding the chick tightly enough and it doesn't take long for chick to die from the cold. When the mother gets back, she needs to find the father and chick (if they are still there), purely through calling out to them. The father then hands the chick over to the mother (again a dangerous move) and he calls to the chick and it calls back so they can find each other again later when he returns. He goes back to the sea and the mother regurgitates food to the chick to feed and strengthen it. The sea ice is melting as summer continues on, so the distance to the water becomes less and less. He goes back to get food (its a bugger of a journey for him since he hasn't eaten in something like 105 days). He returns with food and then the cycle goes on for a couple months with she going back and returning with food, and then he does the same, and so on. In this time the chick keeps growing. The parents need to be alert of predators such as flighted birds that are eager to pick off a chick or two for food. At about March the chick is prety much abandoned to fend for itself and the parents break up and dissapper back into the sea. In a couple months they'll return to find a new partner (The Penguins are monogomists whilst they are together but each season they will have a new / different partner). The chicks hang around for a while together and then after some time (not sure exactly how long) they'll take to the sea for the first time. They will return in 5 years to become parents themselves.
I'd like to get closer to nature and understand it better. In this I'd like to take more wildlife photos (in the latest Issue (eight) of Cosmos Magazine, in the section "CALL OF THE WILD", they presented the world's most beautiful photographs of the creatures and places that make our planet unique - from the winners of the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year. This inspired me. The photos can be seen at Natural History Museum Exhibition.)
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