bbc.co.uk navigation

Masses of macaroni penguins

by Matt Swarbrick for Bustling Bird Island, 7 December 2008

Bird Island near South Georgia is home to 80,000 (pretty smelly!) macaroni penguins. Two weeks earlier the rocks had been completely bare, it only took three days for the birds to almost completely cover their breeding site.

Explorer Matt Swarbrick ponders the mystery of why these birds lay an extra, unwanted egg whilst filming the huge colony.

To play or download Masses of macaroni penguins you need to enable JavaScript. How?

Masses of macaroni penguins

Matt amongst masses of macaronis

Penguins aren’t the only things to amass on this tiny island. Fur seals also come to Bird Island to breed in huge numbers each year. Follow their story in Surrounded by fur seals

Published 31 March 2009

More details

Programme

Frozen Planet

Expedition

Bustling Bird Island

Meet the explorer

Matt Swarbrick

Matt lived in sub-Antarctica studying penguins and seals before working as a researcher on Frozen Planet.

Where on Earth?

Map showing

© Microsoft Virtual Earth, image courtesy of Navteq

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.