Adélie: Hello

a photo by G. Murray Levick of a fronting penguin, from the front of his book, via “The first Adélie penguins arrived at the Ridley Beach rookery, Cape Adare, on October 13,” Dr. G. Murray Levick recorded in his observation diary in the Southern Summer of 1911. Levick was the staff surgeon-turned-zoologist on Robert Scott’s Terra Nova British Antarctic Expedition, one of six men who stayed to study the coast. His findings were published in 1914 as Antarctic Penguins: A Study of their Social Habits, which is available in its original, censored form on the Internet Archive. In Levick’s introduction, he quotes the description of penguins made by Emil Racovitza, the Romanian zoologist on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition in 1897: “Imagine a little man, standing with two broad paddles instead of arms…Have this creature walk on his two feet, and give him at the same time a droll little waddle, and a pert movement of the head; you have before you something irresistibly attractive and…