PENGUIN SUMMER

by Eleanor Rice Pettingill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 1960

Illustrated by photographs taken by Sewall Pettingill, the author's ornithologist husband, for Walt Disney's ""True Life Adventure Series"", this travel-book-out-of the-ordinary, tells of the couple's adventures photographing and collecting birds, partricularly penguins, in the Falkland Islands in 1953. Few tourists reach the treeless and storm-swept Falklands, 800 miles from Antarctica, the remotest of British crown colonies, a naval base and an ornithologist's paradise. Half of the 2500 human inhabitants live an anything but primitive life in the capital, Stanley, the others on outlying islands, with the non-human inhabitants: sheep, sea-lions, which terrified the author, and birds: albatross; dangerous, lightning-quick skuas; gulls; shags or cormorants -- and penguins, gentoos, 30 inches high; jackass penguins, nesting underground; rock-hoppers. Bird-cries and the smell of birds permeate the book, the odor of regurgitated shrimps with which penguins stuff their young, and of chicks killed by skuas. Albatross and shags perform strange dances; ""teen-age"" penguins dip reluctant feet in surf; penguins ""porpoise"" on waves; a moulting penguin colony is ""like a thousand feather pillows ripped open."" There is discomfort in the book and some danger, and also the delight of sudden sunlight in the midst of storms -- and the constant kindness of strangers. Sometimes disconnected and written with no attempt at formality, this nonetheless charming book will appeal to naturalists, devotees of tales of travel and scientific adventure, and to professional and armchair bird-watchers.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1960

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Clarkson Potter

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1960

Categories: NONFICTION