FLIPPING HECK!

Taking a wrong turn in the coldest place on earth could cost you your life... and it almost did for hundreds of penguin chicks who accidentally waddled to the edge of a 50 foot-high Antarctic cliff. Cinematographer Bertie Gregory, who captured the jaw-dropping scene for a new documentary, reveals what happened next

- James Rampton

BERTIE Gregory could scarcely believe his eyes. While making his captivating new series, Secrets of the Penguins, the British Emmy and Bafta award-winning cinematographer witnessed an absolutely astonishing example of animal behaviour. In the process, he became the first person ever to capture it on film.

Bertie was tracking a colony of hundreds of young emperor penguins in this planet’s most hostile conditions. The director was braving phenomenally challenging temperatures of -54°C. It was so freezing, sheets of ice had formed on the penguins’ coats.

The director had been filming the chicks for many weeks as they trekked across the bitterly inhospitable Ekström Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the coldest place on earth. They were heading towards the Southern Ocean to take their first swim and turn into adult penguins.

What happened next, though, was utterly breathtaking. The director, 31, says that it was definitely, “not in the script. Penguins famously don’t read the script. It’s very annoying, actually! They go, ‘I’m not going to do that, but I'm going to do something even more crazy instead!”

Talking exclusively to the Daily Express, Bertie continues: “Normally young penguins take their first swim by jumping off the sea ice, which is a one or two-foot-high drop, and that was what we planned to film.

“[But] one group of several hundred chicks had taken a wrong turn on their way to the ocean and found themselves at the top of this enormous, 50 foot-high ice cliff.”

Unsurprisingly, the stranded young penguins froze at the cliff's edge. This unforeseen situation was obviously terrifying, but they took the plunge into the unknown anyway.

“What's crazy is these penguins haven’t swum before,” Bertie says. “This is the first time they’ve even seen the sea, and there are no adults showing them the way. That’s why they took the wrong turn.