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Thomas Peschak

As the sun sets on Marion Island’s western shore, a quartet of wandering albatrosses breaks out in the species’ ritual dance, a complex suite of calls and gestures, including a “sky calling” display from the bird at right. Wandering albatrosses mate for life, and the dancing behaviour, typically performed by sub-adults, helps individuals size up prospective partners.

Southern rockhopper penguins must navigate the rocky cliffs and crashing waves when coming to and from Marion Island.

After hitting the water at 60 miles an hour, plunge-diving Cape gannets feast on high-calorie sardines, their preferred prey. This photograph captures the first evidence (top) of underwater kleptoparasitism among Cape gannets: one bird caught heisting a fish from another.

Coats fresh from molting, a column of macaroni penguins trudges up the ridge of an old volcano crater on sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Behind them is the 'Amphitheatre', a series of terraces in the crater worn down over eons by nesting and molting macaronis. “The sound of all the penguins reverberating from this multi-tiered half crater is really impressive,” says ecologist Otto Whitehead.

In New Zealand's Chatham Islands, the most sheltered nesting site for albatrosses is a natural cave high up on Te Tara Koi Koia. Inside, nests protected from erosion from wind and rain form pedestals tall as top hats. The downy grey chicks will fledge in five months’ time.

A scalped grey-headed albatross chick on sub-Antarctic Marion Island gruesomely conveys the threat seabirds face from invasive species. For reasons not entirely understood, mice brought to the island by humans 200 years ago have begun feeding on birds at night. With no instinctive fear of this new danger, a bird will sit passively while mice nibble into its flesh, until it succumbs.

Tortoises jockey for shelter from the sun. They will cook in their shells if they remain in the heat for too long. This photo was originally published in "Cave-Dwelling Giant Tortoises Are a Big Surprise," in February 2016.