The Ross Sea was frozen over, and there were no seal in sight. There were
only 100 Emperors as compared with 2000 in 1902 and 1903. Bill reckoned
that every fourth or fifth bird had an egg, but this was only a rough
estimate, for we did not want to disturb them unnecessarily. It is a
mystery why there should have been so few birds, but it certainly looked
as though the ice had not formed very long. Were these the first
arrivals? Had a previous rookery been blown out to sea and was this the
beginning of a second attempt? Is this bay of sea-ice becoming unsafe?
Those who previously discovered the Emperors with their chicks saw the
penguins nursing dead and frozen chicks if they were unable to obtain a
live one. They also found decomposed eggs which they must have incubated
after they had been frozen. Now we found that these birds were so anxious
to sit on something that some of those which had no eggs were sitting on
ice! Several times Bill and Birdie picked up eggs to find them lumps of
ice, rounded and about the right size, dirty and hard. Once a bird
dropped an ice nest egg as they watched, and again a bird returned and
tucked another into itself, immediately forsaking it for a real one,
however, when one was offered.
Meanwhile a whole procession of Emperors came round under the cliff on
which I stood.
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