Due to heavy reconstruction of this webpage, this blog is temporary suspended to renew in this summer, it will be updated again after late-autumn, thank you for your visits in these 9 years.

1 November 2013

Pierre Bignon

Gentoo Penguin (巴布亞企鵝)
French Australia and Antarctica Territories (2011)

18th February, 2013. Port-aux-Français, Kerguelen

However, very sorry it is impossible to find biographic of Pierre Bignon, only known he was born in 1921 and died on 1990. He seems a scientist always research in Antarctica area, so the stamp illustrated Gentoo Penguin but his portrait on the tag.

Gentoo Penguin breeds on many sub-Antarctic islands. The main colonies are on the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Kerguelen Islands; smaller populations are found on Macquarie Island, Heard Islands, South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. The total breeding population is estimated to be over 300,000 pairs. Nests are usually made from a roughly circular pile of stones and can be quite large, 20 cm high and 25 cm in diameter. The stones are jealously guarded and their ownership can be the subject of noisy disputes between individual penguins. They are also prized by the females, even to the point that a male penguin can obtain the favors of a female by offering her a nice stone.