Penguins fly in the water rather than above the water. Their wings have become almost like flippers, useless for flying but fine for propelling the birds through the water at speeds up to twenty-five miles an hour. Their webbed feet are used as rudders.
Except for the breeding and nesting seasons, penguins spend most of their lives at sea, swimming about with just their heads showing. They eat squids and fish in the water and drink the salty water of the sea. Even the penguins’ eyes are adapted for seeing in the water; on land the birds act as if they were near-sighted.
Penguins are found only in the southern hemisphere. Two of seventeen species nest in the Antarctic. The other fifteen species nest on coastal islands of South America, New Zealand, Australia, and southern Africa.
Colour variations among the species are generally found in head feathers, eyes, bills and feet. Except for these areas, most penguins are black and white, although the patterns vary among the species.
The emperor penguin is the largest of all species. The adults stand almost four feet tall and weigh about seventy-five pounds. In March, autumn below the equator, the emperor penguins begin arriving at their ancestral nesting grounds in the Antarctic. They come in groups, fat and sleek from months of feeding at sea. Often they make five-foot-high leaps out of the water on to the ice, landing on their feet. Then they begin their waddling walk inland to the nesting area. Their legs are placed so far back on their bodies, that, out of water, the upright birds trudge along at a slow pace. Sometimes, especially if they are pursued, they toboggan over the snow and ice on their bellies. Then they can make rapid progress.
Penguins often mate for long periods, if not for life, When they arrive at the nesting grounds, only those breeding for the first time or those finding themselves without mates have to find new mates. The single white egg is laid by the female in May. Then a long ordeal begins for the male emperor penguin because he alone is responsible for hatching it. The female heads back to sea to feed. No place in the world is colder than the Antarctic in winter. Not only are there terrible winds, but the temperature drops far below zero Fahrenheit.
The male penguin has to balance the egg on his feet, covering it with a flap of skin and feathers on his lower abdomen; if it touches the ground or is exposed to the air for even a short time it freezes. Not all members of the penguin colony have eggs, but all would like to have one to hatch. If an egg is dropped by a parent, it may be broken by other penguins attempting to get it for themselves. During storms the males that are incubating gather in groups for greater warmth, hopping about carefully, each with an egg balanced on its feet.
The eggs hatch in about two months and within a few days the mother penguins arrive to take charge of the babies. The fathers then go off to sea to break their long fast. They have not eaten since they came to the nesting grounds in March, and have lost at least one-third of their weight. They return within the month to help take care of the young.
Young emperor penguins are covered with greyish down. They spend the first days of their lives on the feet of their parents; they feed by sticking their heads into their parents’ gullets to get regurgitated food. If any young birds are accidentally left on the ground by their parents, there are many non-breeding birds ready to take care of them.
Within Four or five months from the time the young hatch, they have lost their down and acquired their feathers. In the meantime the colony has begun to break up and move back to the sea. The first birds to go are those which do not have young. The emperors move off from Antarctica in small orderly groups, usually on ice flows, as the ice breaks up in the summer. The young, in brown plumage, are among the last to leave. About two years later they will have adult breeding plumage and will return to the Antarctic continent. There they will breed near the place where they were hatched.
About the time the first migrant emperors are leaving the Antarctic, the Adelie penguins are arriving in flocks for their nesting season. They are much smaller than the emperors, being only about one and a half feet tall.
The Adelies nest in windswept areas where there is little snow. Nests are built of pebbles, the only material available in this region. Part of their courtship ritual is the presentation of pebbles to a potential partner. Male and female penguins look alike and apparently even they cannot readily tell the difference between the sexes. An Adelie male goes courting with a pebble in his beak. If he presents it to an unresponsive female, or one already mated, she pays no attention to him. If he offers it to a male, he has a fight on his hands. But if he offers it to an unmated and willing female, she accepts it. From then on it is the male’s job to get pebbles, preferably round ones, to complete the nest. He spends much of his time trying to steal these from neighboring nests.
Eggs appear in the nests in November and hatch in about a month. The parents sometimes eat snow during this mating and incubation period, but otherwise they fast. Adelies nest in large colonies of from 100,000 to almost 500,000 birds. The king penguin looks very much like the emperor penguin but is smaller and has yellowish feathers on its breast. The king penguin stands about three feet tall and breeds in the Falklands and other sub-antarctic islands. Like the emperor, the king penguins hold the precious eggs on their feet.
The gentoo penguin nests in the Falklands and on small islands off the tip of South America. It is a shy bird, but fairly common, and was called Johnny Penguin by the seal hunters. It is the only penguin which has a white mark on its head.
The gentoo penguin spends the four or five winter months at sea. In spring it moves inland to nest.
Its chief enemies are those of most penguins, the leopard seal and the skuas. The leopard seals catch adult penguins in the water. Skuas, large birds of the southern hemisphere, eat the unattended eggs and young of the penguins.
Penguines Pictures
