Island of Strange Noises

Dazzling swimmers in the ocean...on land penguins are more like losers in a sack race.

– Narrator Peter Hayden on penguins

To be shipwrecked 500 westerly windswept miles from New Zealand, imagine the terror of the castaways’ first night ashore: the darkness cut by a piercing subantarctic wind, and by a weird cacophony of cries.

– Narrator Peter Hayden

He'd be dangerous to approach on a flat beach, but stuck between the rocks he can't lunge very far. Apart from this, his stinking breath is enough to keep the men at bay.

– Narrator Peter Hayden, on a five metre long elephant seal

But at home, parents and chicks share the unendearing habit of accurately vomiting a stream of fish oil at intruders...

– Narrator Peter Hayden on the giant petrel seabird