Leopard Seal and Adelie Penguin

Leopard Seal (豹海豹)

Australian Antarctic Territory (2001)

15th February, 2009. Casey Station

Leopard Seal is second large seal in Antarctic, just after Southern Elephant Seal (南象海豹). Back colour is dark grey but light greyed abdomen, however it named leopard as its neck with black spots. Killer Whale (虎鯨) is its only natural enemy, smallest marine life like krill to large animal penguin also can become its food.

This set of WWF stamp shown the Leopard Seals playing with Adelie Penguins (阿德利企鵝), actually those penguins look facing danger as sometimes Leopard Seal kills them. When seal wants to catch them, it will lay under the water and wait penguins jump into water.

The cover was sent from Casey Station of AAT, that means I collected two station's postmarks. The postmark features a couple of Australian Sea Lion (澳洲海獅), they look very cute. Also have one signet on the left-bottom of envelope illustrated Adelie Penguins lay on a wooden case, do you think these three penguins look like escape the dangerous ?

Emperor Penguin

Emperor Penguin (皇帝企鵝)

French Southern and Antarctic Territory (2002)

2nd November, 2008. Dumont D’Urville

Emperor Penguin is the largest penguin in the world. Before the discovery of Emperor Penguin, King Penguin is the largest Penguin, for divide them clearly after it was be discovered in Antarctic, scientist named them Emperor Penguin. These two species look similarly however Emperor is little bit larger and different, especially their chicks, King Penguin’s chick grown grey fur but Emperor is blown. Emperor Penguin only lives in Antarctic mainland and nearby islands, but mainly bleeding in mainland during summer. One of their natural enemy is Leopard Seal.

These two covers are sent from different antarctic bases which operated by French government and Australian government separately. The first one, seal on the left side illustrated Emperor Penguin and marked it is their 58 years to exploration of Antarctic. Another one cancelled with a postmark illustrated outlook of Davis Station. Same as most mails from Antarctic, there have a seal mark the location of the base. France one is 140º1'E 66º40’S and Australia one is 77º58'E 68º35’S.

Australian Antarctic Territory (2000)

17th December, 2007. Davis Station