The moult is finally over, and now Promises and friends have left the colony and are heading towards Brazil to spend the winter. The colony is now completely abandoned and will remain so until October.
The colony has mild weather during the summer, but in the winter it gets very cold. What is worst for the penguins is that the days get very short and gloomy in winter, and Promises cannot see so well under the water to catch fish.
The nearer to the pole one gets, the greater the difference in daylight between summer and winter. During the early 1990s I worked with sea turtles for the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. In Hawaii there is only about an hour difference in daylight between summer and winter, because Hawaii is much nearer to the equator than the pole.
Here in the penguin colony we are much closer to the pole than the equator, and the difference between winter and summer is large. We have a difference comparable with northern Alaska or northern Scotland. During the winter it does not get light until about 08.30 hrs and then it gets dark again by about 16.30 hrs. We get less than 8 hours of daylight at this time of year, and even during those
8 hours it is generally cloudy, rainy and gloomy. The penguins catch fish about
20 or 30 metres under the water, and the deeper they dive down below the surface the darker it gets. It is not easy catching silvery fish underwater without good light.
So with their annual moult now finished, the penguins are free to travel north in search of better weather. They do not have to come back to the colony again until October, so that gives Promises plenty of time to travel up to Brazil to escape the winter weather here in the south. They make the same journey every year.
The penguins are late setting off this year, but it doesn't really matter. They don't have any particular destination in mind, and are not in any rush. They take things nice and slow, gradually swimming further north each day as they hunt for fish. Penguins spend hours every day looking for fish to eat. The only difference now is that instead of swimming around in circles looking for fish, they swim in one direction, following the coastline northwards. Each day they get a bit further north, and each day they are rewarded with a few minutes of additional daylight.
After leaving the Straits of Magellan where their colony is located, the penguins head north, following the coast of Argentina. They pass by several other penguin colonies along the way and meet up with other penguins that join them on their northern migration. Penguins are very sociable and like to travel in groups.
The first colony they pass is Monte Leon, which is where the BBC filmed my work in 2009 for their documentary entitled "EXPLORE: Patagonia to the Pampas". This colony is a nature reserve and is open to the public. It has a population of about 40,000 breeding pairs of penguins.
Just 50 kms further north lies the colony at Puerto Santa Cruz which has about
60,000 breeding pairs. This colony can only be reached by walking 8 kilometres along a beach of large stones. There are high cliffs behind the beach that stop vehicles or people from reaching the colony except along the beach, which is a long and exhausting hike. I have never actually seen anybody else at all at this colony during my visits. It is such slow going over the stones that few people reach the colony.
Moving further north Promises can meet up with penguins from the colonies at Puerto San Julian (35,000 pairs), Punta Buque (30,000 pairs) and Punta Laura
(10,000 pairs). About 100km further north is the town of Puerto Deseado where there is a small island about 45km out in the open ocean called Isla Pinguino, which means Penguin Island in English (47º45'S 65º54'W). There are about 15,000 pairs of Magellanic penguins breeding on this island, along with about 200 pairs of Rockhopper penguins.
On this island there are no bushes and the ground is so hard that it is impossible to make burrows. The Magellanic penguins on this island have abandoned their usual style of nesting, and have copied the nesting style of the Rockhopper penguins that also live on the island, nesting in little hollows on the ground. Thankfully there are no predators on the island, otherwise it would be too risky laying eggs out in the open.
There is an old abandoned lighthouse on the island, and the penguins have made their nests along the gravel path leading up to the old lighthouse. This is one of the few areas on the island where there is gravel instead of solid rock. I attach a couple of photo showing the penguins nesting along the path leading up to the lighthouse.
The sea around the island is usually very rough making it difficult for people to visit. The lighthouse was built about a hundred years ago, but now the lighthouse is abandoned and nobody lives on the island except for the penguins and a colony of sealions.
These colonies previously mentioned are all in the Province of Santa Cruz in southern Argentina. Now Promises and friends swim beyond the Province of Santa Cruz and into the Province of Chubut. Here they pass by two more major penguin colonies. First comes Punta Tombo which is the largest Magellanic penguin colony in Argentina with a population of about 180,000 pairs (nests). It is by far the most well known penguin colony in Argentina and receives thousands of tourists every year.
The tourists visiting the penguins here follow a set path to prevent them walking over the burrows. In some places the path is raised up over the penguins on wooden bridges so that people can walk across the colony without disturbing the penguins returning to their nests from the beach. The penguins certainly seem to appreciate the effort made on their behalf. Not only are the penguins not disturbed, they actually come and group together under these bridges (see attached photo).
Penguins just love gathering in groups underneath things, and it doesn't seem to matter what. If you put anything near Magellanic penguins suitable for sitting under, for example a bridge, a table, or even a car, the penguins will gather together underneath it. The penguins under the bridge in this photo are not nesting, they just like grouping together under the bridges.
The final colony travelling northwards is Peninsula Valdez, near to the city of Puerto Madryn in Argentina. This city and the surrounding area was settled by people from Wales about 200 years ago, and in many of the villages here the people still speak Welsh. One such example is the village of Gaiman which Diana, Princess of Wales, visited in November 1995. There are no penguins nesting north of Peninsula Valdez on the Atlantic side of South America. From here to Brazil the penguins only visit but do not make nests.
During the migration penguins from all these colonies mix together with Promises on their way to Brazil. During the winter the entire world population of Magellanic penguins from Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands, all gather together off the coast of Brazil. Brazil does not have any colonies where penguins breed, and many people living in Brazil are completely unaware of how many penguins there are just a few miles off their coastline.
The penguins never come ashore during the winter. They have everything they need out a sea. With 12 hours of good daylight each day, the penguins are able to catch fish easily, and will remain here until it is time for them to return home to the colony, to the start the process of egg-laying and chick-rearing all over again.
I will write to you again in a few weeks time with a summary of the last season's penguin research.
Best wishes, Mike
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