Penguin Post Office Natural World

Every summer, tens of thousands of tourists

flock to a peculiarly British outpost on the Antarctic Peninsula.

They are drawn here by the spectacle of gentoo penguins,

and a post office from where they can send a postcard home.

The post office is staffed by a dedicated team who, over the next

four months, will live as neighbours to these extraordinary birds.

But the penguins' story is not always picture-postcard.

In-fighting,

marital squabbles

and daylight robbery are routine...

SQUAWKING

..and growing chicks must overcome many hurdles

if they are to survive to adulthood.

This unique backdrop,

where people and penguins live cheek by beak, offers

an intimate view into the life of one of the world's most loved birds.

Welcome to Penguin Post Office.

It's early November - summer on the Antarctic Peninsula -

and around 3,000 gentoo penguins are returning from an intensive

spell of deep sea fishing to their breeding grounds at Port Lockroy.

The gentoos are in a rush to establish nest sites.

The longer days and warmer temperatures encourage the penguins

to start the business of finding a mate to breed and raise young.

Many will have to walk the best part of two miles

in search of a suitable nest site -

an arduous journey for a bird with big feet and very short legs.

But what makes this colony of gentoos particularly unusual

is that every year they choose to take up residence

alongside Port Lockroy's other summer inhabitants...

People.

An advance party from the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust

has arrived at Port Lockroy

in preparation for the forthcoming tourist season.

This year, the water surrounding their island base

is still frozen solid

and so, like the penguins, they take a path across the sea ice.

Their destination is a remote British outpost

with an extraordinary history.

Today, it's the most popular tourist attraction in Antarctica.

The big draw being penguins and the Penguin Post Office.

Welcome to Port Lockroy!

Port Lockroy is about 700 miles to the south of Argentina and Chile

and lies in the heart of the Antarctic Peninsula,

which forms the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica.

Here on the island,

this building houses the world's most southerly public post office...

..a charitable gift shop

that supports a number of Antarctic heritage sites...

..and a museum dedicated to Port Lockroy's history

that goes back to the dawn of Antarctic exploration.

Port Lockroy was first discovered in the early 1900s by French explorers

as a safe place to anchor and shelter from harsh storms.

Later, whalers working the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula

processed their catch here.

But in the early 20th century,

as nations around the world started to claim ownership of parts

of Antarctica, the British wanted to get in on the act.

The British realised they needed what they called...

"We need a permanent presence on the peninsula

"if we're going to actually protect our claim."

So they brought down two wooden huts on a ship, called Base A and Base B.

And this is Base A.

In 1943, here at Base A, also known as Bransfield House,

the British established a research centre for the upper atmosphere.

Their work was crucial

in the development of high frequency radio communications.

The base also acted as a post office

in order to reinforce Britain's claim on the peninsula,

and occasional passing ships would deliver letters back to the UK.

The base was continuously manned by scientists from 1943

until it was closed in 1959.

The men worked a 33 month tour-of-duty, which included

two very long harsh winters when there were no visiting ships.

But their life here was not as hard as you might imagine

as they made Bransfield House a home from home,

incorporating almost every comfort they were used to back in Britain.

This is a fabulous room.

We've got the gramophone the men would listen to,

we've got the picture of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen -

every British base certainly had those photographs.

We've got the bar - the men enjoyed a tipple.

Player's Navy Cut - of course, everybody smoked in those days.

And, with no women on the base, the men were free

to decorate in a style of their choosing.

You've got marvellous paintings that guys painted of, you know,

Hollywood movie stars - women, of course -

on the walls in the bunk room.

Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors, Elizabeth Taylor,

I have to look around, yeah, Elizabeth Taylor's over there,

and Doris Day. Yes, Doris Day, that's on of my favourites.

It was an all-male contingent down here, sometimes for, you know,

overwintering, obviously, and the mind, you know, the mind wanders.

So, of course, yeah, it was a nice way to express yourself.

But one sight the men would not have enjoyed

is that of the gentoo penguins.

They arrived on the island after the scientists had left

and over the past 50 years,

as the climate in Antarctica has warmed,

the snow has started to melt earlier in the season,

giving the gentoo penguins new nest sites amongst the rocks.

But this year there is more snow than usual,

and the team have some hard work ahead of them.

Soon they will be welcoming thousands of tourists

from passing cruise ships, to the museum,

gift shop and post office.

They've a long summer ahead of them.

For me, it's really about the opportunity

to immerse in this environment

and spend a good amount of time here, a whole season here,

and see all of the changes that happen from November until March.

And so many things do change - the penguins arrive, they mate,

they lay eggs, the eggs hatch, the chicks fledge and then they go.

And seeing that, you know, who gets to see that?

I mean, I never watch a bird go through its whole entire life cycle

and here I'll get to do that,

and with a penguin, which is, you know, a pretty cool bird.

Most gentoos remain faithful to their partner for life

and now the penguins have started their courting rituals.

Underneath the Union Jack, a pair have claimed their regular

nesting spot and reaffirm their bond by bowing heads.

Down at the boatshed, another couple gets reacquainted.

All over the island, gentoos are preparing to breed.

This year will be particularly busy at Port Lockroy

as up to ten members of staff will come and go.

The core post office team consists of four women, led by Helen,

who first came here six years ago.

The first time I came here,

it was just somewhere I'd always wanted to visit.

I just love going to the wild places,

I was drawn by the remoteness of it and the hardness

of living here, the cold and the difficulties, and the fact

that, even though we're living in a lovely warm building,

we're still camping, basically, in a hut.

We're camping, we've got no running water. It's very basic.

The chance to work in Antarctica offered Jane,

who trained as a lawyer in England, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

People at home just are amazed that, you know,

I'm lucky enough to have this opportunity, really.

Er, they think it's great.

They think I'm mad because I'm always cold

so I'll just be freezing here!

Erm, but to start with, you just can't believe it.

Everywhere you look, there's a penguin, so it takes a little

bit of a while to adjust to that. And then, once you do,

it's just this constant source of entertainment, you know, with their

everyday goings-on and the ins and outs and activity in the colonies.

It's really, really good.

Back at the water's edge,

some of the gentoos are bringing pebbles ashore from the seabed.

There are no trees on Antarctica so, instead of using twigs or leaves

to build nests, these penguins make theirs from small stones.

Picking out the best one

and carrying it all the way to the nest site

is the penguin equivalent of giving a loved-one a box of chocolates.

During the summer months,

Port Lockroy is under almost 24-hour daylight

and the sea ice is finally starting to break up.

Outside the post office, the couple under the Union Jack

are busy building up their nest.

Down behind the boatshed,

this pair of penguins is well ahead of the game.

They've lucked out and have found an old nest, already free of snow.

Over the past week, they've been adding new stones, piling them

one on top of the other, to create good drainage from snow and rain.

A dry nest is essential

if these birds are to have any success in raising young.

Penguins are fiercely protective of their pile of stones

and, because nests are so tightly packed together in the colony,

neighbourly disputes constantly break out.

And a nest left unattended for more than a few seconds

is in danger of being stolen.

SQUAWKING

A large cruise ship has arrived in the bay.

Tourists from all over the world

have each paid thousands of pounds to be here.

Coming to Antarctica is, for a lot of them, it's a lifelong ambition.

You know, it's a dream they've had.

Many of the people on the ships are fairly elderly

and they say, "I've wanted to do this all my life."

Coming ashore is a chance for close-up photos of gentoos,

whilst inside there's a plethora of penguin-themed mementos and gifts.

The appeal is so great

that many people part with over £500 in a single shopping spree.

But, above all, everyone delights in the simple act

of sending a postcard from the Penguin Post Office.

To find a little bit of Britain

tucked away here in the Antarctic is...

It's wonderful, just wonderful.

It's a surprise to people that they can be so far away from home

and it seems so strange in so many other respects,

and yet here's this familiar concept of a post office

and a chance to keep in touch.

We're just writing to our daughters.

I don't know what you're planning to say!

I'm just planning to tell them this is a fantastic place to be.

"To my darling family, it is so hard to describe this amazing place.

"I really am at the end of the world -

"snow, wind and penguins all around.

"What an adventure we are having!"

"Freezing conditions, penguins, snowing, rough seas,

"unbelievable and spectacular scenery!"

-These cards are to ourselves!

-THEY LAUGH

Almost everything has a penguin on it,

including specially-designed stamps that take postcards the world over.

And, not surprisingly, the gentoo colony

that surrounds the post office makes a great impression.

They toddle along, they waddle along,

they fall over and they get up again.

You could just watch them for hours

because their antics are just so adorable.

I think I have about 800 pictures of penguins on my camera

and I don't want to delete one of them.

But in spite of their comic appeal,

gentoos are not always as innocent as they look,

and given half a chance they'll cheat on their partner.

Back by the boatshed, a female returns to her nest site

to find her partner has been up to no good.

Another lady has taken her place and she's not going to stand for it.

She viciously attacks the unwelcome female

whilst the unfaithful male watches on.

Finally she returns and reprimands her partner.

He gets it in the neck for his philandering ways.

Penguins are prolific love-makers

and mate frequently throughout the summer.

The male bows to his partner

and appears to arouse her by flapping his flippers.

If the female submits to his charms,

she lies down and the male mounts her back.

For the male, it's an acrobatic balancing act to stay on top.

When the moment's right,

the pair briefly rub their private parts together,

allowing the male to transfer sperm

by a process known as a cloacal kiss.

If the egg is successfully fertilised,

a chick will be expected in around two months' time.

But things do not always go exactly according to plan.

It's approaching the end of November

and the penguin pair that was ahead of the game with building their nest

are amongst the first on the island to be sitting on eggs.

A few days later, eggs also appear in the nest under the Union Jack.

Most females lay a clutch of two,

each coated by a thick shell

to protect them from cracking against the stones.

In the Antarctic keeping eggs at a constant 35 degrees centigrade

poses a real challenge.

But both male and female, who take equal share in incubation duties,

have a brood pouch - a hollow area of bare skin

that's lined with blood vessels to transfer heat from parent to egg.

For the next month they will continually turn their eggs

to ensure that heat is evenly distributed,

giving the developing chick the best chance of survival.

Now they're sitting on eggs, the post office penguins

face the challenge of protecting them from predators.

Skuas are formidable adversaries.

They launch surprise attacks, dive-bombing penguins from the air.

Despite brave attempts to drive this skua away,

repeated aerial assaults have caused an egg to be dislodged

from the nest of a panicking penguin.

The skua gets its reward.

Unlucky parents who lose their eggs to skuas will have to wait

another year for their next chance to raise young.

During this period of incubating eggs,

one adult is always pinned to the nest,

keeping eggs warm and defending them from predators,

whilst the other is away fishing.

This leaves the stones they've made such a concerted effort to gather

easy pickings for thieving penguins.

At the boatshed stone pilfering is rife,

and one sly penguin is proving particularly adept

at burgling the neighbours.

Running through the colony, stone after stone is pinched

and taken back to the nest.

All penguins have criminal tendencies and, over the course

of the breeding season, thousands of pebbles will be stolen

and re-stolen in the competition to keep up the largest family pile.

It's now the height of summer

and the peak of the Antarctic tourist season.

The post office penguins don't appear the least bothered

by the presence of people

and seem perfectly happy to pose for photographs.

With an average of two ship visits a day,

there are a lot of postcards to be processed.

But for Kristy, who is taking a sabbatical from teaching

at the University of Washington,

the chance to work in Antarctica is a welcome break from academia.

So, we hand-frank everything here at Port Lockroy.

This year we'll do probably

between 60 and 80,000 postcards by hand like this.

It's kind of relaxing.

It's probably one of my favourite things that I do here, actually.

People write about penguins, they're always writing about penguins

and so many people send messages of...of love really, you know,

just love to their family and their friends.

I think that's because this place really is romantic

in a very wild kind of way,

and that's what people are trying to capture

and they only have a couple of lines on a postcard

and so they'll often just say things like "this is magical",

you know, and "it's a dream come true"

and "it's a once in a lifetime experience".

And I agree with them fully. It is pretty magical here.

It's not just the post office and penguins

that draw people to this region.

The Antarctic Peninsula is scenically

by far the most dramatic region of the continent...

..and it also provides a rich diversity of wildlife.

The Peninsula is an extension of the South American Andes,

forming a coastal spine of mountains

whose jagged peaks rise out of the ocean.

This otherworldly landscape of glaciers and ice

casts a spell on all of those that have the fortune to visit.

Living in the Antarctic is really hard to describe.

The colours here - it's just hues of blue and grey and white,

and very bright, even on a dull day.

You hear the waves on the beach or you hear the calls of the birds

or the sounds of the weather, the snow or the hail.

It's just, erm, the nearest thing I could imagine

to being on another planet, on our planet.

It's the end of December and over the past 24 hours

the first gentoo chick on the island - with the aid

of a sharp little egg tooth on the tip of its beak -

has been slowly breaking free of its egg.

Once hatched - weighing little more than a couple of ounces -

this vulnerable chick is born blind to the world.

Emerging from the egg has been an exhausting process

and the chick barely has the strength to hold up its head.

With just a thin layer of down,

the chick has no means of regulating heat,

so for the next two weeks it will be completely reliant

on its parents to provide warmth.

Seconds after hatching, the chick instinctively

makes repeated begging calls to be fed,

which the parent answers by regurgitating food from its stomach.

With up to three days between the first and second hatching,

the chance to feed and gain valuable weight gives the first-born

a considerable head start over its sibling in the race for survival.

Now there are hungry mouths to feed,

parent penguins take it in turns to go on day long fishing trips

that can take them as far as ten miles from the colony.

But with super-streamlined bodies and immensely powerful flippers,

these journeys are effortless as they literally fly through water.

Forage dives lasting up to three minutes

can take them to depths exceeding 200m.

They reach speeds in excess of 20mph,

making them the fastest swimming birds on Earth.

The penguin's main quarry is krill -

small crustaceans that form immense swarms

and underpin all life in the Antarctic.

Gentoos may make as many as 450 dives in a single day's foraging,

and if they've been successful in gorging themselves on krill

they return to the colony half a kilo heavier.

As soon as a penguin returns from fishing

it waddles back to the nest to find its partner.

Because they have been separated for the best part of a day

the pair reaffirm their bond by the formal ritual of bowing heads.

Then they swap positions

and the returning adult feeds the newly-hatched chick.

Both parents divide their time equally between caring

for the young and foraging for food.

Within a week most of the eggs on the island have hatched

and the majority of nests have two chicks,

demanding round-the-clock attention.

Because the summer season is so short

the chicks need to grow fast to survive the cold months ahead,

so in just three weeks they're likely to quadruple in size.

Competition between chicks is fierce, and if food becomes scarce

the parents will favour the strongest chick,

leaving the weaker one to perish.

At this stage of their development the chicks are vulnerable

to attack from skuas, and the penguin adults are on high alert.

But the skuas have needs of their own.

Skuas come to Port Lockroy in the summer months to breed.

They establish nests in shallow rocky depressions, called scrapes,

and the female usually lays a clutch of two eggs.

The adults share in incubating the eggs, swapping over every few hours.

Like the penguins, they have to be quick to switch positions

to ensure the eggs don't lose heat.

Penguin chicks are now a prized source of food for the skuas

and hunting intensifies.

The skua is a dogged opponent,

continually surveying the colony for the chance of a quick kill.

For this unlucky chick it's a gruesome end

as the skua attempts to swallow it whole.

Life's a bit more cosy in the Penguin Post Office

and, with so many tourists, the postcards are piling high.

Kristy bundles them up and they're taken by cruise ship

900 miles north to the Falkland Islands.

The Royal Air Force then fly them all the way to England,

where they enter the UK postal system and are dispatched worldwide.

They'll take up to six weeks to reach their final destination.

It's now mid-January and the chicks are quickly growing.

Too big to sit under the parent,

they're starting to discover there's a world beyond the nest.

Down behind the boatshed, this plucky little fellow,

still a couple of months from learning

the true purpose of flippers,

is taking his first uncertain steps towards independence.

Soon the chick is given a very valuable lesson -

don't annoy the neighbours!

For now, chicks won't dare venture far from the nest.

But even the shortest excursion provides plenty of opportunity

to practise the tricky art of rock climbing.

Food is still by far the biggest preoccupation

but instead of just being fed on demand,

the chicks are now being made to work for it.

The parent, forcing its chicks to chase for a feed,

encourages competition

where the strongest and most determined gets fed first.

Food chasing also helps the chicks build up strength

in preparation for the time when they'll need to fend for themselves.

By adulthood penguins become such fast runners

that over short distances they can outrun a human.

A strong wind has brought blizzard conditions to Port Lockroy.

But the rough weather hasn't deterred the tourists,

who've taken refuge in the Penguin Post Office

to buy penguin paraphernalia and send postcards home.

GENERAL CHATTER

I wrote a postcard to ourselves and I said that...

SPEAKS CHINESE

..in Chinese, which means we landed here in blizzard,

so best wishes from the end of the world!

That's all!

I mean, Antarctica's not like any other holiday destination.

The weather takes priority.

You have to expect the unexpected.

You really can't plan.

You know, it is a hostile place, it's a hostile environment,

it always has been and it always will be for people.

We're here at the post office on the worst day that we've

encountered so far since we began our journey in Antarctica.

"It is very cold and snowy. The penguins are everywhere."

It's amazing their robustness

and capability to sustain bad weather.

We are hardly sustaining the storm outside and they are,

it's as if it's a sunny day for them.

The penguins are just completely soaking it all up,

loving this weather, so it really provides perspective.

They are adapted to be here and we are not!

WIND HOWLS

PENGUIN BRAYS

As the weeks go by, curiosity and the strong urge to explore

is taking the chicks further and further from the nest.

As they run the gauntlet of the colony and enter neighbouring

territories, the chicks are repeatedly bullied and harassed.

SQUAWKING

The chicks seem slow to learn that neighbours aren't always welcoming

and it pays to keep out of the way.

One chick has fallen victim to a vicious assault.

Although it's been bloodied and is now severely weakened,

the adults' attack is unrelenting.

This distressing behaviour is rarely witnessed,

so we can only speculate why it's occurred.

Perhaps it shows the extreme lengths

the penguins will go to in order to defend their territory.

The dead chick's sibling returns

and lays its head down on the corpse

as if mourning the loss of its companion.

At the skua's nest an empty shell is obvious evidence

that there's been a recent hatching.

This ball of fluff will stay under the protection of its parent's wing

only for a couple of days.

After this short time, it will leave the nest and take refuge

in the nearby rocks, freeing both parents to forage for food.

When it comes to feeding time, the adult returning

from a successful hunt lands a good distance from the nest

so as not to reveal its location to predators

like giant petrels, or even other skuas.

Surprisingly agile, by instinct the chick

clambers across the rocks to meet the reward of food.

The male regurgitates the contents of his stomach,

presenting the chick with semi-digested fish.

The female, who has spent

so much time on the nest brooding the chick, shares in the spoils.

This year, her other egg will fail

and this chick will be their only offspring.

It's now the beginning of February

and, with the tourist season still in full swing,

the chicks are starting to gang together

in nursery groups called creches.

The chicks need to stick together because their parents are now

spending long periods at sea foraging for food.

The chicks now have a very healthy appetite

and the parents have to work hard to meet the ever-growing demand.

But what goes in one end...

comes out the other.

I do love the penguins, but it is not all, um...

They poop a lot.

And, with so many pooping chicks on the loose,

it's a constant battle for the post office workers.

Living with the penguins does cause us some challenges, you know.

The smell and the mess -

I mean, the penguins are constantly pooping everywhere.

We have a path, a rocky path that leads up to the base

and all our passengers, all the visitors walk up this path

and we have to keep that clean so that not too much, um,

gets walked into the base.

So every morning we collect buckets of seawater from the sea

and scrub the rocks clean.

We don't honestly really notice the smell but everybody else does,

so it can be quite funny when you're in the post office

and one of the passengers will say,

"How do you cope with the smell of the penguins?"

And the first thought that goes through your mind is,

"I can't really smell the penguins."

I think we just, we absorb their smell, too,

so we all smell together come the end of the season.

Just like lazy teenagers, the chicks are quite happy to sit around

while all the work's being done.

By mid-February the adults start looking very dishevelled.

This scruffy stage is known as the annual moult,

where old feathers that have started to lose their insulating

and waterproofing properties are replaced by new ones.

It's a stressful time as they're in no condition

to enter the water and fish.

Because of this parents take it in turns to moult,

ensuring one still remains able to feed the chicks.

Over this 20-day moulting period the adult fasts and, having only

fat reserves to survive on, they lose up to half their body weight.

The chicks are also transforming

and beginning to look a bit like punks with Mohican hairdos.

They are also moulting,

quickly losing their downy baby fluff for adult plumage.

Soon the chicks will be indistinguishable

from their parents and, as winter approaches,

it won't be long before they are ready to enter the water.

The chicks are now congregating in even bigger groups.

Ganging together provides safety in numbers,

making them far less vulnerable to predation.

A skua chances its luck.

The chicks flee but continue to stick together in tight formation.

Not deterred, the skua persists,

harassing the chicks on the off chance

it will be able to pick off a weak one.

But, as the chase continues, the tables start to turn.

The chicks gain confidence

and as a united front they start to chase the skua!

CHIRPING AND HONKING

A valuable lesson -

when you're a penguin, it's best to stick with the crowd.

While the post office workers

get on with some much-needed pre-winter maintenance,

the chicks are beginning to discover a new element - water.

The young ones are curious,

though seem a little nervous about getting their feet wet.

But hunger is a powerful incentive

and, to encourage chicks to take the plunge,

parent penguins draw them down to the water's edge

by making them chase for food.

Once they enter the water, the chicks have to learn

how to swim by trial and error.

Soon the chicks will be feeding themselves

and will, at last, gain full independence of their parents.

It's the beginning of March and winter is fast approaching.

The tourist season has ended

and the post office workers are dispatching the last post.

It's a day of reflection as this is also the day

that the team is packing up and leaving Port Lockroy for home.

Being in this environment for so long, really,

I think we get a sense of what life is in Antarctica.

Not for us, because we're not meant to be here, really, as people,

but for the creatures that evolved to be in this environment,

and to bear witness to that is very, very special.

The team has chosen one of the worst days of the season

to leave the island

and, as they struggle against storm-force winds

to take down the Union Jack,

their thoughts inevitably turn towards home.

I think we're all looking forward to getting back to certain things

at home but we'll all go back with a different outlook on life.

The experience of coming here is, er, is life-changing.

It takes you back to, um, to what's really important in life, you know.

It takes you down to the bare essentials

and makes you realise that all the stuff

you think you need at home you actually don't,

and that's refreshing.

The team is heading to a nearby cruise ship

which will take them to South America.

For the next seven months, the base will remain unoccupied

until a new group of volunteers returns

and opens up the post office for another summer season of tourism.

It does cast a spell on you.

When you go home it leaves a lasting impression on you

and it's very hard to not want to come back.

I know that I will want to come back in some way at some point.

But, over the winter, the penguins remain around Port Lockroy

and these tough, resilient birds

will brave many months of brutal sub-zero temperatures.

Soon all the fully grown chicks will join their parents

on regular long-distance fishing trips,

where, finally, they'll become masters of their Antarctic home.

Then next summer, in huge numbers,

the penguins will gather once again

to start the process of breeding at the Penguin Post Office.