Reunited at last.
The mother sees her chick for the first time.
She’s keen to start parenting…
but the father needs persuading to surrender the chick
he’s been caring for all winter.
He must now put his chick at risk.
In these temperatures, it could freeze in seconds.
The male will have to let go.
Eventually, the transfer to the mother is safely made.
The chicks grow quickly on a diet of fish and squid.
Soon they are keen to explore, but always with mother in tow.
This chick is less fortunate, its mother has not returned to claim it.
Another orphan is searching for a new family,
but this female already has a chick of her own.
Some orphans receive too much mothering
from penguins whose own chicks have not survived.
The urge to parent is so strong that they will compete with one another
to adopt any chick they find.
Many of these squabbles end in tragedy,
as the poor chick is trampled to death.
Those chicks that do have parents quickly learn survival skills.
Even in spring, they must huddle together for warmth,
just as their fathers did in the depths of winter.
A group of chicks has got lost in the blizzard.
Cold and disorientated, they search for the colony.
It will not be long before the storm claims its first victims.
By early summer, the chicks are surprisingly well-developed…
and now look ready to take on the world.
Those that survive their first year have the best possible start in life,
thanks to the extraordinary hardships endured by their parents…
parents who battled with the Antarctic winter and won.
