WE REACH THE WEST COAST OF THE ISLAND AND ARE ASSAILED BY A BLIZZARD OF BIRDS
The first wave is an acrid smell of fishy guano, the second a cacophonous wall of squawking, like windscreen wipers on full throttle in a rainstorm, and the final wave is the Atlantic’s feisty swell delivering our Zodiac dinghy crunching onto a gravelly beach where I can scarcely believe my eyes.
Penguins. Several hundred thousand of them. Some bounding out of the ocean with bellyfuls of fish, but mostly huddled throngs of black and white bodies with a splash of gold, the trademark of elegant king penguins.
Amid this melee are creches of chicks, fluffed up with brown feathery coats, and squeaking at altogether higher frequencies to their parents, many of whom will be far out to sea, fishing to feed them.
They may seem
