taking the PlUnge | 29on a cliff ledge 80 metres above a strip of boulders sloping down to a
grey- green northern sea that is restless and churning. Over the past few
days the chick, now one- quarter the weight of an adult, has flapped its
tiny wings increasingly urgently, oblivious of the fact that they are too
small to generate level flight. One evening, partly prompted by its fa-
ther’s calls, it leaps, flaps, and glides. Ideally its slanting downward tra-
jectory will lead beyond the boulders at the cliff base where a painful
bounce and a Great Black- backed Gull await. The preferred outcome is
certainly a frantic flutter directly to splash- down, allowing father and
chick to meet on the water and swim away from land. Or imagine a
young Wandering Albatross that has spent some 10 months at the nest.
Fed by visiting parents once a week, it has grown out of all recognition
from fluff ball to a full- sized albatross with a wing span exceeding 3 me-
tres. For the past few weeks, it has opened its wings more and more
often and felt the lift created by the westerlies of the Southern Ocean.
At times, the lift almost overcomes gravity. The bird then relies on a
hasty retraction of the wings to flop back down to terra firma. But even-
tually timid delay must give way to bold flight. And I shall always re-
member the one time I observed a young Wanderer take its first flight.
It spread its wings, dithered, dithered again, and then jumped from the
top of a cliff. Within seconds the breeze was supporting its wings and it
flew firmly westward towards a fading orange sunset. But sometimes the
aerial route is not an option for the fledging seabird. Travel south to
the Antarctic where the ice shelf fringing the continent is cracking up
under the warmth of the summer sun. Timing is all. Should the ice
break up too early, the crèche of Emperor Penguin chicks may drift
away on an ice floe and, lost at sea, be deprived of parental feeds. If too
much fast ice persists, this too will impede the delivery of food to the
youngsters. But if the break- up of ice follows a roughly normal schedule,
the chicks will have shed their down and completed growing the stubby
feathers of water- going penguins about the time open water begins to
lap the fringes of their colony. Fledging then entails a splash off the ice
into the chill sea, and an immediate launch into independent life.
Once a young seabird left its nest site, there was, in the past, rather
little information about what happens next. Partly this was because,
with most seabird species not breeding until they are several years old,