King Penguin Study I, South Georgia Island

O creature which in southern waters roam, To know some more about you I would wish.

Though I have seen you in your limpid home, I don’t think I can rightly call you “fish”.

To taste your body I did not decline, From dainty skinner’s fingers coming fresh,

’Twas like shoe leather steeped in turpentine, But I should hardly like to call it “flesh”.*

King Penguin Study II, South Georgia Island

King Penguin Study III, South Georgia Island

*  Cited in: Diana Preston, “A First Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole” , Mariner Books, 1999