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Erläuterung siehe ganz unten  -  explanations see below on this page

Erläuterung: Mit Hilfe archivierter Eselspinguin-Webcambilder von GARS O'Higgins wurde die Anzahl der im Kamerabild anwesenden Pinguine an 35 Tagen (in festen Intervallen von 5 Tagen) von Oktober 2005 bis Ende März 2006 durch einfache Auszählung ermittelt. Für jeden der 35 Meßtage wurden die Werte von 9, 15 und 21 Uhr UTC (universal time code) erfaßt, um die offenbar typischen tageszeitlichen Schwankungen darzustellen. 

Die erste Meßreihe 2005/2006 ergibt schon ein recht interessantes Muster und es zeichnet sich ab, daß selbst so eine kleine Kolonie charakteristischen Fluktuationsprozessen unterliegt, die Ausdruck typischer (brutbiologischer) Verhaltensweisen sind. Die hohe Auflösung der verwendeten wetterfesten Kamera der MOBOTIX AG erlaubt eine äußerst exakte Interpretation der Bilder. 

Möglicherweise stellt diese kleine Untersuchung den weltweit ersten Versuch dar, brutbiologische Daten von wilden Eselspinguinen mit Hilfe einer fest installierten Webcam zu dokumentieren. Eventuell werden auch die Daten der Brutsaison 2006/2007 erfaßt.  

Summary: via our gentoo webcam located at the northern antarctic peninsula it can be shown, that even such a small colony has specific dynamic activity patterns during the brood season. The method is very easy: I measured the number of visible gentoos from pics of the webcam archive at an fixed intervall of 5 days from october 2005 till end of march 2006, in total data from 35 days. From each single day I measured the number of visible penguins at 9 am, 3 pm and 9 pm UTC (universal time code) to documente the typical daily activity patterns.

The first series of measurements gives an impression of the seasonal characteristics of the gentoos activity at their brood grounds. Maybe it is possible to add more data from the season 2006/2007.

Intersting data: 

• phase A seams to be the only period during the brood season with a daily minimum number of penguins visible in the morning.
• during phase B (central incubation period) the number of visible penguins is quite stable. Reason are the incubating, non-stop present penguins, who share their incubation duties with their partners in an intervall of about 2 days (data not shown in this graphic, own observations from penguin cam 2) The significant decline from phase A to B might be the result of two factors: during the incubation time one partner usually is up and away in the ocean. But we also had this very awful storm which eleminated almost 10 nests, they were given up. Only 4 pairs made a late attempt for a second brood.  
• phase C shows the grown up chicks, wandering around in the typical social structure of creches/kindergarden. The large variability of the data (min/max of 20 individuals) are the result of larger groups of chicks which appeared suddenly in the webcam pics.
• the most impressing visualized thing maybe is the change from phase C to D and finally E. It is the result of the several weeks long excessive feeding tour of the adult penguins in the ocean (D, completely absence of almost ALL penguins), before they return fat to land for the last important phase in the brood season: the annual molting. The only thing which makes me wonder from this part of the graphic is this: why differs the number of penguins so much at the molting phase? I thought they stay at land, so I would expect a more equal number during teh whole day. But: the afternoon numbers are always much, much lower than the evening numbers. Where are they in the afternoon? Just standing near the shoreline, outside sight of the webcam view? I hope to find a penguin specialist who can give a good answer.

This might be the first scientific approach of a remote documentation of gentoo penguin brood biology in the Antarcitc by a fixed internet webcam.

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