Tim writes: This was taken on a dull, rainy day at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia where hundreds of thousands of King Penguins breed. This was just one small section of the enormous crowd. I think Salisbury Plain is the second largest King Penguin colony on the planet after St Andrews, just a few miles down the coast. It was taken with my 80-400 zoom at its widest aperture and I focused on a line of penguins in the middle. I liked the effect of a shallow depth of focus but it was more out of necessity than design.
King Penguins take an inordinately long time to rear their chicks to independence at 14-16 months. So breeding colonies are occupied year-round. They also start on next year’s breeding before they have quite finished fledging this year’s chick. And about two in three King Penguins swap partners between years, but they are serially monogamous. They can breed at three years old but most King Penguins are twice that age when they start. Those that failed last year will start nesting early but usually it is December or January when the single egg is laid (which weighs about 300g). Both parents take it in 6-18 day shifts to incubate the egg on top of their feet. It hatches after 55 days and the tiny youngster is then guarded in the same way (tucked inside a pouch while balancing on the parents’ feet). This again is done in shifts (3-7 days) for 30-40 days.
Taken with Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 80-400mm at 400mm f5.6 1/1250 ISO 800
[registration_form]