The penguins have arrived at their winter destination, and are floating and resting in the water along the beautiful coastline of Brazil. The sea is home for Promises at this time of year, and one reason that penguins love it so much is because of the ease with which they can catch fish.
From October to May home for Promises is back in the colony, keeping eggs warm, rearing chicks and moulting. Penguins have to make nests on land to do all of those things. Bird eggs must be kept warm to hatch, which would be impossible floating in cold water. The chicks are also unable to swim when they are little, so a land-based nest is the only solution. Despite being highly adapted to life at sea, penguins are still birds, and as birds they are forced to spend much of their life on land, even though they prefer to remain out at sea.
The main problem for Promises nesting on land is that the fish they eat are out at sea. So each day the penguins have to spend about two hours just swimming to where the fish are found, before they can start feeding.
Here in Brazil the penguins are free to sleep floating in the water wherever they choose, and of course they choose to do that close to where the fish are living. Whenever the penguins get hungry they can just dive down and catch a few fish. It is all very relaxing for Promises. The penguins put on weight when they are in Brazil, but that doesn't matter either. Being fat is good for a penguin.
It means that they have more energy reserves in case they ever have to go without food.
Body fat is very important for warm-blooded animals that live at sea, such as whales, seals and penguins. Body fat is not only a very important energy reserve that is needed for keeping warm in cold water, but the body fat is also deposited just underneath the skin, where it creates thermal insulation that slows down the loss of heat into the cold water.
Human skin is full of tiny blood vessels that bring warm blood to the surface to keep the living tissue supplied with oxygen and nutrients. The heat from that warm blood is quickly lost in cold weather, which is why humans rely on behavioral responses to avoid the cold. The discomfort forces us to cover ourselves or to seek shelter. However fat is not living tissue and has no oxygen demand, so fat layers have very little blood passing through them. Penguins, seals and whales deposit their fat underneath the skin, so most of their blood vessels are kept well away from the skin, and very little heat is lost.
In water there is no limit to the amount of body fat that animals can carry, because in the water the weight of the fat is supported by the water. Whales are a perfect example of that. They simply float, and move around with very little effort, regardless of how big they get.
The weather in Brazil is lovely for the penguins, and the longer hours of bright sunlight make catching fish easy. Sometimes it gets quite hot in Brazil, even now during the winter. Magellanic penguins do not like hot weather. In the colony they often suffer during periods of hot weather when they are on the nest, but of course here in Brazil they spend all their time in the water, so the penguins are kept nice and cool even when it is hot.
The life of a penguin is not an easy one, and it often requires a lot of sacrifice.
They have to go without food for days at a time when they are incubating the eggs. They work up to 16 hours a day catching food for the hungry chicks. They work so hard feeding the chicks that they loose weight themselves. Then they have to go for three weeks without food during the moult. Three weeks of standing around on land with nothing to do except think about the fish they could be eating, and the itching caused by the moulting feathers.
After all that they come here to Brazil, and it is like penguin paradise. Lovely weather, and nothing to do except float around on the ocean waves all day, eating and sleeping as much as they want. People sun-bathe on the beaches, but have to bring towels, food and water, and return to their hotels at night. The penguins just float in the water and have all their requirements to hand. This must be the most enjoyable time of the year for Promises.
Of course nothing lasts forever, and in a few weeks time Promises will have to give up this life of leisure and start heading back home to the colony to begin rearing more chicks.
During the breeding season our work with the penguins is non-stop, as we follow them through each phase of their breeding cycle at several locations. So whilst the penguins are away in Brazil we usually take a few weeks off to rest and visit family. However I am from Britain, so traveling back to Britain to visit my family is impossible this year. Here in South America the borders are closed, so I am stuck in Punta Arenas throughout the winter this year, even though the penguins have left.
With lots of time on my hands, and not many new adoptions coming in because of people laid off from their work, I have had plenty of time to work on other things.
One of those is bringing my penguin book up to date. It was originally written in the year 2000, and released at the International Penguin Conference 2000 at La Serena, so it was long overdue for an update.
When you signed up with our adoption program you were sent a digital copy of the book, so now I attach a copy of the new updated version. It is now formatted as a PDF so it should also display better regardless of what device you view it on.
You can also download copies of this book and a variety of our other research publications from www.penguins.cl/download.htm
I will write to you again in a few weeks time, by which time Promises will be starting the journey back home to the nest.
Kind regards, Mike
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