Penguins

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Gentoo penguin fight. Gentoos defend a circle around their nest with displays and pecks. They freeze in this standoff position for about half a minute.

Gentoo penguin colony.

Chinstrap penguins. (Pygoselis antactica). Chinstraps penguins are calf high and weigh about eight pounds. They can dive to 400 feet for three minutes.

Bowing display. Chinstrap penguins are pointing together at where they will build their nest. Their crests are slightly raised.

Yawning, stretching chick. He took a nap right after this yawn and stretch. He looks well fed, doesn't he? Yawning, stretching chick artwork. Electronically derived drawings of the chick.

Mating chinstraps. This is pair-bonding mating. Mating to produce chicks happened months before.

Moving stones. The Gentoo male moved stones around just so in the nest. The female watched and each time indicated her approval or disapproval.

Hot penguin. It was sleeting, but the penguins thought it was hot and held their flippers out to radiate away excess heat. They send so much hot blood to the underside of their flippers that they flush pink. This one's carrying a stone.

Swimming penguin. In the water penguins look a lot like ducks.

Adelie penguin fight.

Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) striding out across snow colored pink and green with algae. There are about 2.5 million Adelie pairs. Notice the pink feet. Adelie's have pink feet, gentoos have orange.

Handsome Gentoo (Pygoselis papua). Gentoos stand knee high and weigh about 10lbs. There are approximately 236,000 Gentoo pairs. This one preened and posed. He wasn't disturbed by my presence at all, so I took his picture several times. The crew from the ship guards many places to make sure you don't accidentally go there or disturb the wildlife. There are international agreements on what's permissible and what's not.

Devoted Macaroni couple (Eudtptes chrysolophus). Penguins may live more than 20 years and form long-lasting pair bonds. These two later preened each other. There are about 12 million Macaroni pairs.

Gentoo braying like a mule.

Braying chinstrap penguin. Sometimes they sway from side to side when braying in what is called a Vertical Head Sway display.

Gentoo chick close up. This chick came up to me so close I had to bend over backwards to take this picture. It's starting to loose its chick down and grow adult feathers.

Penguin colony with glacier in background.

Penguin colony with mountains in background. Notice how steep the mountains are. They are solid rock. Loose stuff is scraped away by winter glaciers.

Penguin cliff colony. Quite a walk up.

A really good nest. The stone nest is mounded high to keep the chick out of the pools of water. If it got wet, it would get cold and die.

Mother, chick and egg. Notice the chicks in the other pictures are much older. This mother is trying a second time. One egg didn't hatch.

Chick feeding. The chick pecks the parent's lower mandible to request food. The parent recognizes this signal and regurgitates krill directly into the chick. It's very efficient. No krill is dropped on the ground.

Close-up of feeding chick. Note the backward pointing barbs on the mother's tongue. They ensure she doesn't accidentally lose anything she's caught.

Mother with 2 chicks. It was a good year, many penguin parents had two chicks that were almost full grown. 

Chinstrap fight. Notice in this and the other pictures that all the penguin species do this kind of fighting. They place their nests far enough apart that when they stretch out toward their neighbors, they can't touch.

Waiting chick. As chicks mature both parents must go to sea to find food for them. Chicks check out returning adult penguins with great hope that it will be their parent. They sigh and settle down to wait longer when they discover it wasn't their parent.

Another waiting chick.

Chick chase. (Lisa's picture. Do not download.) Chicks chase their parents for food. They get so close and run so fast that when the parent in the lead falls down, the chicks fall of top of the parent.

Dirty chick. This picture was taken at a British historic site. The penguins are nesting in the remains of a wooden boat. The chicks get dirty from lying down and can't bathe like the adults until they get their adult feathers.

Chick pecking boot.

Drinking. The doves and pigeons of the world drink by sucking up water. All other birds, including penguins, drink by getting a beakfull, then tilting their heads back to swallow.

  Jackass Penguin postcard. Don't copy this picture.

Emperor Penguin picutre by Gillaume Dargaud. Don't copy this picture. Check out his website link on the links page. M. Dargaud is a scientist who works in Antarctica. You can hear penguin calls on his website.

A preening Gentoo. In the middle picture, he's getting some oil from a gland near his tail, which he will spread on his feathers for waterproofing.

A scratching penguin. Penguins don't have fleas, but they do have lice. Insects can't survive exposure to weather in the Antarctic. They have to live on someone.

Feather texture. Penguins usually look more like they're wearing clothes than they're covered with feathers, but the dense fluffiness of this one's feathers is plain to see. He'd been preening.

Moulting on the beach. Penguins have to moult (loose their old feathers and grow new ones) every year. They do this by hanging around the beach for three weeks while it happens. They can't swim while moulting, so they can't hunt either. They go without food for the whole three weeks.

Moulted feathers. Penguin feathers are long and narrow. At first glance, they look like white, fir tree needles.

Moulting chick. Chicks can't swim in the sea until they moult their chick feathers and get adult feathers. This chick's almost ready.

Magellanic Penguins. Seaworld in San Diego, California, has over 300 penguins, including these Magellanic penguins who live outdoors and like to float in the cool water while enjoying sunbathing. Notice the flipper has a plastic band around it. Seaworld has a serious care and breeding program. They know every penguin. Notice in the second picture that you can see the bottom of the penguin's foot. It has fleshy, leathery pads.

Seaworld San Diego's excellent penguin home. Look carefully at these pictures and you can see emperor and king penguins. The keepers are herding the penguins to one end of the enclosure so they can spray in more snow. The penguins get 8 tons of new snow every day. Each penguin is hand fed a fish with vitamins in it. Krill are tossed in the water so the penguins can hunt them. I spent 4 hours watching the penguins at Seaworld. They're very active. Some play with the keepers like a cat might, following the keepers around, rubbing against the keepers, nibbling the keeper's clothes and ropes, dashing between the keeper's legs, hiding, or climbing high to a favorite spot.