📍 Paulet Island, Antarctica By late December, most of the colony had already found its rhythm. The older chicks have their legs under them, have learned the particular urgency of the chase. These two hatched among the last, which means they are new to everything, including this. The parent has walked back from the water's edge carrying the meal the way Adélie penguins always do, held inside the body rather than in the beak, warm and ready. One chick reaches up with everything it has. Its eyes are still the deep blue of something just arrived. That blue does not last. It fades as they grow, replaced by the dark eyes of the adult world. For now, it is the color of the ice shelf at the edge of the bay, of water that has never been anything other than cold.
