South American Penguin update - Promises

>
> Dear PenguinPromises
>
> The penguins are now back home in the colony after their month long feeding trip.
> They have had a very relaxing time just floating in the water and recovering
> their weight after the exhausting period of chick-rearing.
>
> Whilst they were away the penguins did not spend much time swimming, except for
> when they were hungry and decided to go fishing. Most of their time was spent
> bobbing up and down in the water, rising and falling with each passing wave.
> Sometimes the waves can be huge, and floating out in the open ocean can be like
> being on a roller coaster. I can say that from personal experience of using inflatable
> launches to reach offshore penguin colonies.
>
> I often visit the Rockhopper colony on Isla Pinguino which is about 40 km offshore
> from Puerto Deseado in open ocean. Even in what fisherman would call good weather,
> going over the peak of each wave and down into the trough can be a drop by as
> much as a two storey house. The launch we travel in is only about 9m (30 feet)
> long, so it really does feel like a roller coaster.
>
> The launches I use are run by the local tour operators, who take tourists to
> see the penguins closer to the city on a daily basis. Isla Pinguino is much further
> offshore. It is available to tourists but only as a special pre-booked tour,
> since it is a 6 hour round trip, and the weather has to be perfect to make the
> crossing.
>
> The captain and his crew of two are used to being out in these rough waters in
> such a small vessel. I am not. I am not used to sitting in a small inflatable
> launch and looking up at waves that tower above us. It does not help when we
> are going over the crest of those waves, to have the captain grinning from ear
> to ear, and screaming out things like "Wowwww" and "That was a big one".
>
> I always wonder, if these are the days of perfect weather for the crossing, what
> are the bad days like? Of course penguins are not affected no matter how rough
> the seas get.
>
> During the last month Promises remained close to where the fish live the whole
> time, so finding food was always easy. Whenever the penguins got hungry they
> were able to just dive down and catch a few fish. The rest of the time was spent
> just relaxing and doing nothing. It all sounds very lazy, but this was the first
> chance for Promises to rest since last November.
>
> Last year Promises began incubating the eggs, and from then on it has been all
> work. Once the chicks hatched the adults were working from dawn to dusk every
> single day, looking after the chicks and catching enough fish to keep them well
> fed. The penguins lost up to a quarter of their weight during that period, and
> this was their first chance to recover that weight.
>
> Now their short break has come to an end, and the penguins are back in the colony
> with new challenges to face.
>
> Feathers are amazing things. They each have a central stem with lots of tiny
> branches coming off it. Their complicated design enables them to keep warm-blooded
> birds like Promises warm, even when living in cold seawater. That is not an easy
> thing to do. Feathers trap a layer of warm air around Promises just like wet
> suits do for divers and surfers.
>
> Fur seals are known for the high quality of their fur, hence their name. However
> their fur is nowhere near good enough to keep a penguin warm. It is okay for
> large animals such as seals, which also have thick layers of fat under their
> skin as additional insulation against the cold, but penguins would die from hypothermia
> if they only had fur.
>
> Feathers are far superior to fur in cold seawater, and it is no coincidence that
> the only small warm-blooded animals living in icy cold water for long periods
> of time, all have feathers.
>
> Feathers are very strong and resistant to wear, but they don't last forever.
> Eventually they become damaged and worn out, and then they have to be replaced
> with new feathers. Penguins have to change their feathers once a year to make
> sure that they are kept in good condition. If they didn't do that, the feathers
> would not be able to protect Promises from the cold seawater, and hypothermia
> would inevitably result.
>
> Since the penguins have to come out of the water to change their feathers, they
> have now come back home to the colony. Most penguins like to return to their
> nest during the molt, but some penguins prefer to molt on the beach instead.
> At this time of year we cannot reliably assume a penguin's identity from its
> nest.
>
> When Magellanic penguins begin breeding and make a nest, they retain that same
> nest throughout their breeding life. Prior to egg-laying, penguins always return
> to their same nest and will defend their nest against all intruders.
>
> The males arrive home to begin egg-laying a few days before the females. Often
> a young male penguin, nesting for the first time, will find what he thinks to
> be the prefect ready-made nest with which to impress a female. However before
> the females have even arrived, he gets kicked out of that nest by the true owner,
> arriving home a few days later to reclaim his nest.
>
> You might think that when a fight occurs over ownership of a nest, that the strongest
> penguin would be the victor, but that is not the case. The squatter may give
> a few defiant pecks and calls as he retreats, but the rightful owner always recovers
> possession of his nest. Maybe penguins are just honest, but more likely it is
> because the squatter knows that usurping a nest is a lost cause.
>
> Even if the squatter could hold off the male for a few days, he knows that the
> female will be arriving back home at this nest too, so the squatter would then
> have to defend his claim against two angry penguins. That would be a lost cause.
>
> In addition, any penguin without a nest is also a penguin without a partner,
> so the male's primary ambition is to attract a female. It would be hard to attract
> a female in the midst of a prolonged dispute over who owns the nest. His best
> bet is to just move on and find another spot to nest, which is what invariably
> happens.
>
> However the breeding season is now over, and the defense of nests is no longer
> a priority until breeding resumes again later in the year. During the molt many
> penguins do not return to their nest, preferring to molt on the beach in groups.
> So other penguins will often use a nest in the owner's absence without any dispute.
>
> That means we cannot reliably identify which penguin is in which nest at this
> time of year. Only during the breeding season can we know for sure, which is
> why the individual photos of Promises are all taken from the onset of egg-laying,
> through to the final stages of chick-rearing.
>
> The worst thing about the molt for the penguins is that they cannot go back into
> the water until it has finished. That means they have to go without food for
> 3 to 4 weeks, because the fish are all in the sea, where they cannot go.
>
> Because penguins use their beaks to preen their feathers, the feathers around
> their head and neck are usually the last ones to fall out, as you can see in
> the attached photo. The penguins cannot reach those areas with their beak, so
> those feathers are not preened and take longer to fall out.
>
> You can see that the feathers lower down on the front and back appear to be short
> and stubby. That is because those feathers have not finished growing yet. Over
> the next few days those feathers will grow a bit longer, and will also fan out,
> which enables them to trap air within the plumage in a dimension that fur cannot.
>
> Even after the feathers have finished growing, Promises will still not be ready
> to go out to sea. Before the penguins can go back out to sea the feathers have
> to be waterproofed with wax. The cold seawater would enter the feathers if they
> were not waxed, making them useless at keeping Promises warm.
>
> Near to the base of the tail penguins have a gland that produces wax. They take
> that wax in their beak and massage it into the feathers by preening. As you can
> imagine it takes a long time to ensure that all the feathers are waxed. It is
> one of the reasons that penguins are always preening.
>
> Penguins do not only wax their feathers after molting. Penguins wax and preen
> their feathers constantly whenever they come ashore. Just like most birds, penguins
> spend a lot of time preening. The areas around the head which cannot be waxed
> with their beak, are waxed using their feet or by allopreening.
>
> Allopreening is the name given to penguins preening each other. It is an important
> part of the couples' partnership behavior. Not only does allopreening help in
> waxing the feathers, but it also helps to remove ticks and fleas from hard to
> reach places.
>
> The colony is usually a very noisy place, both during the day and throughout
> the night. During the egg-laying season the adult penguins call out constantly
> day and night with their donkey-like braying. Their donkey-like call is the reason
> that Magellanic and African penguins are often nick-named Jackass penguins.
>
> I attach a short video for you to hear the adult's unusual call. The video also
> shows what the colony looks like during the molt.
>
> Those are not snowflakes that you see floating around, they are the feathers
> that the penguins are shedding. You can see penguins in various stages of molting.
> You can also see couples preening each other, just as I mentioned.
>
> There is even some squabbling between the penguins too. Molting is a miserable
> time and tempers are easily frayed, but the fights are rarely fierce at this
> time of year. There are no nests or young to protect so quarrels are short and
> pointless.
>
> As soon as the feathers have grown back and been waxed, Promises will be leaving
> the colony for the winter, and swimming northwards up the coast of Patagonia
> towards Brazil.
>
> Every year the penguins leave the colony for a few weeks during the winter. Winter
> is on its way and Promises will travel north to warmer waters before the snow
> gets here. The colony will be empty during the winter, and the penguins will
> be a long way away in sunny Brazil.
>
> The world has a north pole and a south pole, and when the north is having its
> summer, the south is having its winter. The north pole and the south pole are
> always exactly opposite to each other. The nearer you live to one of the poles,
> the greater will be the difference between winter and summer in terms of daylight,
> and probably temperature too, but not always.
>
> If you live at either of the poles, there is no night-time at all during the
> summer. The days are so long that night disappears altogether during the summer.
> It is light for several weeks without ever getting dark. Of course then you pay
> for that by having very short gloomy days during the winter. That is why many
> penguins leave the south and travel northwards before winter arrives.
>
> Penguins need to be able to see the fish in order to catch them, so short gloomy
> days are no good at all for penguins trying to catch fish deep underwater. By
> swimming northwards towards Brazil, Promises can avoid those short gloomy days,
> and spend the winter where there is good light to help see and catch the fish.
>
> Magellanic penguins always lay their eggs in spring time. That means their chicks
> grow up during the summer, when the penguins have the longest possible hours
> of daylight to catch fish for their chicks. Then in the winter everything comes
> to a halt, and the adults and juveniles all migrate to see out the winter where
> there are more favorable conditions for feeding.
>
> A few other species of penguin live further away from the South Pole and do not
> migrate. There are penguins that live close to the equator. Galapagos penguins
> live on a tiny group of islands called the Galapagos Islands off the coast of
> Equador. They are able to have chicks all the year round because they have good
> sunlight throughout the year.
>
> Galapagos penguins do not follow any seasonal cycle. Breeding is stimulated amongst
> Galapagos penguins by a drop in sea surface temperatures to below about 24 degrees
> Celsius, which corresponds to the presence of nutrient rich currents, and in
> turn an abundance of prey to feed their chicks.
>
> Emperor penguins live close to the South Pole, but do not migrate either. They
> huddle together in groups and sit out the freezing Antarctic winter with no food.
>
> Smaller penguins would not be able to survive such hardship. The smaller an animal
> is the more difficult it is to avoid heat loss, and the more fat it consumes
> keeping warm. Emperor penguins are the world's largest penguins, and even they
> barely survive the Antarctic winters.
>
> However the majority of the world's penguins do migrate further north during
> winter. Their breeding and other activities are all determined by the seasons,
> as is the case for Promises.
>
> It is our intention to start sending out more videos along with the photos in
> the future, so we will be buying a new camera to take better quality videos.
> We will also need suitable software to ensure that the higher quality videos
> can be kept small enough to be easily sent via email.
>
> Please let me know if receiving attachments like the video attached to this email
> causes you problems with you email. It is difficult getting the balance right
> between not sending videos that cause email problems for some people, and maintaining
> a decent quality of video.
>
> I will write to you again in another few weeks, by which time Promises will have
> left the colony and will be swimming up the coast of Patagonia towards Brazil.
>
> Kind regards, Mike
>
>
>