First Encounter

My first experience with the King Penguin colony at Salisbury Plain (on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia) raped me of the blissful ignorance which I had enjoyed whilst flipping through National Geographic magazines and watching Animal Planet on television.



First it is their smell. Before we had even reached the bay, the aroma of 200,000 penguins assaults our senses.


And then it is their volume. Calling to each other and their chicks, a cacophony of voices thundering in my ears.


Finally, it is their wonderous vision. I have never seen anything more spectacular than that view from the shoreline. Grey, white and yellow. Proud and majestic. Chicks, great balls of chocolate brown, organised into crèches throughout the colony. There is no fear. There is no anxiety. There is only the sense of a population going about its business.


As we skirt their perimeter, a juvenile comes toward one of our party. It has identified our genteel Scot. He stops and waits as the bird approaches. It stares at him beneath a crop of dishevelled, malting feathers. With a supercilious grin, he stares back. After a minute of quiet contemplation, the spirit of youth prevails. The penguin waddles off, bored and dissatisfied with the outcome of his curiousity.


Like any meeting of two unfamiliar cultures, it is a brief first encounter.