I suppose that I could bore everyone with why I have been so tardy updating this blog, but I'd rather just get right to the news at hand. At least I can say that I won't be busy next week and, given a window of, say, three days before or three days after... the target date is Christmas Eve.
That's right... hatching will commence in earnest next week and when it starts, the entire colony will no longer be the sleepy bunch they have been.
For weeks now, this has been the typical picture: the changing of the sitter of the nest. By the look of those 
faces, some are eager to go, and I'm sure, hungry.
JC had been a bit dodgy about showing her eggs, but we did manage a peek or two.
Moving fast, as it is cold out there... JC takes a quick peek.
While others took a peek, we did the same.
Weatherwise--lots of fog... the kind that walks before the camera and blocks it and some snow. After all that cloud cover... there was a great deal of ice out there.
But one night did not get so cold and the next morning, the ice began to melt very fast.
That morning, JC was awakened by a rare bright sunrise over Antarctica.
That day showed a bit more than the norm activity in the rookery. JC stayed alert.
Of course, look at JC's pantaloons. The feathers are plucked in order for the eggs to lay directly on the parent's warm belly. RM called to the little guys, but he'll have to wait a bit longer.
JC stretched and allowed some heat to dissapate from the egg... something she couldn't do when the temp was below freezing. The high this day was a balmy 38F.
From my good friend, Ed, over at Nature Commentator and who has an eye for anything Natural History, is this wonderfully clean shot of JC and both eggs.
Ed was also responsible for making the video at the beginning of this blog
Thanks Ed for being such a grand contributor to these pages!
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Over at South Georgia Island, Seals and Kings were on the beach.
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