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Glittering
white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks
like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed,
as wild as any land on our globe, Antarctica lies unseen and untrodden.
(Roald Amundsen)
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| Neko Harbor is home to a now-abandoned Argentinian research station, as well as a large colony of penguins. | ||
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| The harbor is still on the mainland but has more dramatic glaciers than Paradise Bay. | In addition to penguins, Neko Harbor is home to nesting blue-eyed shags. | |
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| When we arrived on shore, we found a Weddell seal there ahead of us. | Our arrival caused a great deal of discussion among the penguins. | |
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| We saw three different types of penguins here: the gentoo penguin. . . | the Adelie penguin, with its all-black head and white eye-ring. . . | |
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| and the chinstrap penguin, which has a distinctive black line along its white lower jaw. | All three kinds of penguin nested and fished together along the shoreline. | |
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| As always, space in the rookeries was at a premium, and this shore-level space was particulary desireable. | We also saw some dramatic ice in the harbor. This bergy bit (small iceberg) shows the characteristic blue coloration of glacial ice. | |
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| If penguins have nightmares, the skua must be in them. This large bird takes eggs and young chicks from unguarded nests. | The end of a glacier on the shore shows the origins of some of the interesting ice formations in the harbor. | |