Fwd: Merry Christmas from Promises

Merry Christmas from Promises

Dear PenguinPromises

The eggs have hatched and there are now two beautiful baby penguins for Promises
to take care of.

Hatching out of the egg is hard work for the chicks. In children's cartoons the
eggs just pop open and out jumps the chick, but it is not like that in real life
for penguins. It takes many hours for a penguin chick to fight its way out of
the egg.

Penguins are heavy birds, so to prevent the eggs from breaking under the weight
of Promises lying over them, the egg shell has to be strong and hard to break.
That is good for stopping the eggs from breaking, but it is bad news for the
chick inside trying to get out. The chick is also squeezed inside the egg and
hardly has any space to move around.

However the chick has been provided with a special tool that can help it escape.
Inside the egg the chick has grown a little spike on the upper tip of its beak,
which is called the 'Egg Tooth'. This spike has just one purpose; to make a hole
in the egg shell. It works exactly the same way as the special hammers you see
on public transport for breaking windows in an emergency. After the chick has
hatched, the egg tooth is gradually absorbed and disappears. It has served its
purpose and is no longer needed.

Even with the help of the egg tooth, nothing is easy. The chick has to wriggle
around inside the egg to get itself into the right position, so that it can hit
the shell with the spike on its beak. Being tightly squeezed inside the egg,
it is difficult to move around, so it can take the chick a long time to do that.
Once it has made a tiny hole in the shell, the chick then has to peck at that
hole so that it slowly gets bigger.

The bigger the hole gets, the easier it is for the chick to chip away at it to
make the hole even larger. Cracks start to form around the hole making the shell
weaker. All the time the chick tries pushing with its shoulders and its feet
to try and burst the egg open. Eventually the egg is weakened enough by the hole
and cracks, and it finally breaks open.

Even then the struggle is not always over. Very often the chick is left with
half the egg shell stuck to its back or its head, and has to wriggle around to
free itself. The chick can only work for a few minutes at a time before it gets
tired and has to take a rest. The tiny chicks get tired very quickly.

The adults are unable to help. With no hands and just a large clumsy beak, Promises
could easily injure the tiny chick, so the anxious parents just have to wait
and watch. When the chick is finally free of the egg shell, Promises can then
help nudge the chick underneath to keep it warm and safe. A few days later the
second chick hatches.

The chicks communicate with Promises from inside the egg. This communication
helps the parents to know when the egg will hatch. During incubation the parents
take turns going to sea to feed, but both parents are present in the nest when
the eggs hatch. They are anxious parents waiting for the 'birth'.

After hatching, the chicks spend the next two or three days just sleeping. They
do not even ask for food because they still have yolk reserves inside their stomach
from the egg. Eventually they do get hungry and wake up asking for food, and
they are fed mashed up fish.

Penguins do not have any real teeth, so the adults regurgitate fish that has
been mashed up in their stomach. Birds do not have teeth at all. Having teeth
would make birds too heavy to fly. Of course penguins cannot fly, but being birds
they have inherited the lack of teeth anyway.

It is not so much that teeth are heavy, but in order to have strong teeth you
need a strong jaw bone, which is heavy. Beaks are made of a material very similar
to our finger nails. It is very light and can be very strong. Parrots for example,
can break open very hard nuts using their beaks, and yet their beaks are still
very light.

Magellanic penguins have a downward pointing hook at the end of their beak, which
they use to stop the slippery fish from escaping when they grab it. They then
swallow the fish whole head first. The fish is broken up into a mushy paste inside
the stomach, and fed to the chicks back in the nest.

The chicks are not able to walk when they hatch, but once they start taking some
food they grow quickly, and soon learn how to stand and walk about. They never
go far, and spend most of the time hiding underneath Promises to keep warm.

The new born chicks are too small and fragile to take any photos just yet. They
spend all their time hiding underneath Promises, which makes taking good photos
almost impossible. So to show you what penguin chicks look like when they are
little, I attach a video which I hope you like.

The chicks grow very quickly, and double their weight every few days. In addition
to increasing in size, there are lots of internal changes going on inside the
chick during the first two weeks. When the chicks hatch they are not able to
produce their own body heat, so they need to be underneath Promises to keep warm.

Generating body heat requires a lot of food to provide the energy, which is why
the chicks are born without that ability. Inside the egg the chicks cannot be
fed, so it would make no sense to generate their own warmth. Once the chicks
hatch and start getting fed, their bodies start to develop special cells that
convert food into heat, as do all warm-blooded animals.

By the time the chicks are two weeks old, they will be able to keep themselves
warm, and that allows them to come out from underneath Promises for short periods.
They also grow a lot of new fluffy feathers so that their newly generated heat
is not lost to the cold air. This new independence allows the chicks to move
around in the nest and to practice walking.

The chicks still do not wander away from the nest. Whilst the chicks are still
small it would be far too dangerous for them to leave the protection of Promises.
There are many predators that would try to catch small chicks if they strayed
away from the nest.

The main predators here are skuas, which are large brown predatory seagulls.
The skuas circle around over the colony, constantly on the lookout for the chicks
of penguins and other birds nesting in the area. The adult penguins are tough,
and pack a vicious bite, so the chicks are perfectly safe so long as they remain
close to Promises. The skuas would not dare come within pecking distance of an
adult penguin.

It takes about six weeks for the chicks to begin leaving the nest, and when they
do, that is when we will be able to take a nice photo of the chicks for you.
As soon as the chicks begin leaving the nest we will send you a photo of them.

In the meantime, I would like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year. I hope you like the attached Christmas card.

Best wishes,  Mike