|Encounters with Gentoos| |Awakening after a rough trip across
the Drake Passage between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic
Peninsula, our first landfall took us to a Gentoo Penguin
(Continued below)| |"Song of the Deep South 2" A young male
singing to attract a mate at the edge of a colony. |"Song of the
Deep South 1" A young male singing to attract a mate with blue
glacial ice behind. |colony. We left the mother ship on a Zodiac
and landed on a small island in the South Shetland Islands
group. When the Zodiac crunched on the gravel shore, we stepped
into the frigid ocean and waddled ashore in our bright red bulky
parkas - while Gentoo Penguins waddled toward the sea in their
black-and-white feathers with bill and foot accents of reddish-
orange. This was December (early in the Antarctic summer); along
the gravel shore, the snow had melted and the Gentoo Penguins
were well into nesting. Their nests were mounds of gravel and
one of the Gentoo mates was laying on each mound, keeping the
pair of eggs (or sometim