Maria Banks spent three months living and working in a remote area of Antarctica where she had a special encounter with the wildlife. (For more about her experiences read her blog, Drilling Into the Past.)

The Adelie penguin is the most southerly distributed of all sea birds. McMurdo station, where our Antarctic research station is located, lies just off the southern tip of Ross Island where over 5 million Adelie penguins make up 38 colonies. We got to meet a few. They seemed to be just as interested in us as we were of them.

~ Maria Banks