‘Never Before Seen’ Yellow Penguin Spotted By Wildlife Photographer On South Georgia Island
Wildlife photographers experience things most of us can only dream of. Thankfully, they share their thrilling images so we can live vicariously through them.
“Even better than I ever expected to be,” is how wildlife photographer Yves Adams described his experience on South Georgia Island in the middle of a huge king penguin rookery.
This was just one of many stops on the two-month photography tour the Belgian photographer led through Antartica and the South Atlantic. However, it is one that the team and Yves will never forget.
Yves had been longing to visit the area after seeing countless BBC documentaries, but never expected to be greeted by an unusual looking king penguin. The team landed on Salisbury Plain and were unloading safety equipment when some curious penguins started to approach. Yves looked up and saw a king penguin with bright yellow plumage and immediately grabbed his camera.
“This leucistic King penguin walked up straight to our direction in the middle of a chaos full of Sea elephants and Antarctic fur seals, and thousands of other King penguins. How lucky could I be!”
He snapped photos of the beautiful bird and said, “I’d never seen or heard of a yellow penguin before. There were 120,000 birds on that beach and this was the only yellow one there.”
Yves called the rare bird “leucistic”, which is a genetic condition that results in a partial loss of pigmentation.
He posted the incredible photos to his Instagram page with the caption, “Winning nature’s lottery with seeing the most beautiful King penguin ànd being able to take pictures!”
The unique bird was pictured frolicking in the water and showing off his unique coloring as it stood next to a typical black and white king penguin with a splash of yellow on its head.
South Georgia Island is uninhabited by people and is the world’s most important penguin & seabird breeding area, states Swoop Antarctica.
There are reportedly half a million pairs of king penguins on South Georgia, but so far only one yellow penguin.
Yves plans to return to area next winter, but for now is off to other areas of the world to capture even more breathtaking images of wildlife.
Keep up with all of his adventures on Instagram.
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