PENGUIN LOVE

ICEBAR Orlando serves Little Penguin Wine. Each bottle supports the Penguin Foundation, and we have also adopted our own Magellanic penguin named Ice Ice Baby. Here is the continuing story of our little penguin.

I attach a new photo of your penguin back home in the burrow. The penguins recently arrived back at the colony from their winter vacations, and the first job they had to do was to make repairs to the nest after the winter storms. The pairs then mate, and two eggs were laid in the nest just a few days ago. Magellanic penguins always lay exactly two eggs, with approximately 4 days between each egg.

If we were to disturb the penguins before the eggs are laid, there is a slight chance that they would abandon the nest and move elsewhere, but once the eggs have been laid the penguins remain in the nest. It is for that reason that we only take the photos of our adopted penguins after the colony has finished laying eggs.

Each nest is examined to make sure that both eggs are present, and the photos that we send to you are taken. From this point onwards the nest is visited every few days to follow the progress of the eggs and then the chicks, right up until the chicks are fully grown and leave the nest to begin life on their own.

The eggs now in the nest have to be kept warm for the next 6 weeks, so that the little baby penguins can grow inside the eggs. Since the nests have no heating, the eggs are kept warm by the adults lying over the eggs. This keeps the eggs safe from predators, like gulls and skuas, and also maintains the correct temperature for the embryos to develop inside the eggs. Keeping the eggs warm like this is called 'incubation', and virtually all birds need to do it. The attached photo shows your penguin in the nest with the eggs.

Penguins have an area of skin on their stomachs which is called the 'brood patch'. This area has very few feathers, and enables the adult's skin to press directly against the eggs, providing good heat transfer into the eggs.

Such close contact is necessary during heavy rain to stop the eggs loosing heat. When the penguins leave the nest and go to sea, this area of bare skin is closed (hence the name 'pouch'), so that the cold sea water does not chill the penguin.

Penguin eggs are quite large, weighing about 130 grams each. That is about twice the size of the hen eggs which you probably eat at home. Magellanic penguin eggs take approximately 6 weeks to hatch, and the hatching itself can take up to a couple of days as the tiny chick (which has very little strength because it has never used its muscles) struggles to break free of the egg shell.

Because penguins eat fish, it means that they are unable to eat anything whilst they are incubating the eggs, so they take it in turns. One of the parents stays in the nest incubating the eggs, whilst the other goes to sea to catch fish, and they change over every couple of days.

Penguins are very fast swimmers, and very good at catching fish. The reason they are black on their backs and white on their tummies, is so that the fish can't see them coming. From deep beneath the water, their silvery-white chests and tummies are difficult to see by fish looking up towards the light sky above, and fish looking down cannot easily see their black backs against the gloomy dark depths below. That is why penguins, and gulls, and indeed most seabirds, have white stomachs, chests and underparts, and black backs, heads and upper parts.

Magdalena Island's only building is a lighthouse, one of many lighthouses that were built around 100 years ago to help ships navigate through the Straits of Magellan. The Straits of Magellan were discovered in 1520 by Hernan de Magallanes, and it was an important discovery because it allowed ships to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, without going around the dreaded Cape Horn, that destroyed so many ships with its savage storms. Magellanic penguins take their name from the Straits of Magellan, which in turn was named after Hernan de Magallanes

Throughout Patagonia the winds are very strong, averaging 20 to 30km per hour most days, with storms of over 100km per hour being common. As such, the seas around southern South America can be very rough, but penguins are very good swimmers, and have no problem swimming in even the roughest of weather. Penguins prefer being at sea, and only come ashore when necessary to raise chicks and to moult / molt (change their feathers).

Magdalena Island is a very big penguin colony, with about 65,000 occupied nests in the colony, which we have been studying and protecting since 1998, thanks to our penguin adoption programme. Population censuses performed since 1999 show that the population is healthy and has increased slightly in size during that period, thanks to monitoring and protection. Unfortunately the progress of the colony has been recently threatened by climate change.

You will recall how last season lack of rain caused much of the grass to die off, leaving loose sandy soil that blows across the island day after day, filling in and covering the penguin burrows. We had hoped that rain during the winter months would have allowed the grass to recover, but unfortunately rainfall during the winter was low, and there has been no improvement in grass cover. Early indications are that this is not going to be a good season on Magdalena Island, and that we are once again going to be kept busy digging out penguins trapped inside their burrows.

Thank you for supporting our adoption programme. Please help us to do more by letting other people know about our penguin adoption programme. Our work is entirely funded by our adoption programme, and the sale of my books, so the more people who sign up, the more we can do to help the penguins.

Our Internet page is www.seabirds.org/adopt.htm and we also have a page on Facebook called "Penguins - Penguins Adoption Programme" where you can see a photo album of us working with the penguins at

http://www.facebook.com/search/?flt=1&q=penguins&o=65&s=40#!/pages/Penguins-Penguins-adoption-programme/103536939709019

If you have a Facebook page yourself, please click on the "Like" button to add our page to your list of sites that you like, so that more people will find us. Every new person that comes across our work, and adopts a penguin, means another penguin being kept safe.

I will write to you again as soon as the eggs hatch.

Best wishes

Mike

OUR BABY PENGUINES

When the chicks were small, it was important for one of the adults to always be around to protect them from predators. Now as they get bigger, the chicks need increasingly large amounts of fish to maintain their growth, and both parents must now go to sea to catch enough fish to satisfy the chicks' increasing appetite.

Despite being only a few weeks old, the chicks are now nearly as big as Ice Ice Baby, and need a lot of food.

With both parents away from the nest for much of the time, the chicks get more adventurous, and begin leaving the nest on their own. This makes it easier for us to take photos, and I now attach a photo of the chicks.

Although the chicks are now nearly as big as Ice Ice Baby, they still have a lot of growing to do. It will be about 4 to 6 weeks before they are ready to go to sea on their own.

First they need to shed out the soft fluffy feathers which you can see in the photo. These fluffy feathers are excellent at keeping the chicks warm when they are dry, but they are useless in the water. These feathers are not waterproof, and would soak up water like a sponge if the chicks went into the water, making it impossible for the chicks to swim.

So over a period of about three weeks the fluffy feathers fall out and are replaced by sleek waterproof feathers. These new feathers are just like those of Ice Ice Baby, except that the markings are different. The chicks will not develop the markings of the adults until they are 5 years old, and this change in markings indicates to other penguins that they are mature enough to take a partner and begin rearing chicks of their own.

The five years it takes to reach maturity are necessary for the chick's body to develop full muscle strength and stamina, and for the chick to become a master at catching fish. Without years of practice to become an expertise fish-catcher, the young penguin would not be able to catch enough fish for its chicks, and any other penguin pairing up with such a young penguin would be unlikely to be successful at raising chicks either. It is for this reason that the juveniles only develop adult plumage when they reach 5 years of age, to prevent other penguins from pairing up with inexperienced penguins.

The other change that the chicks need to undergo before going to sea, is the strengthening of their flipper muscles. The chicks have put down large deposits of fat over the last few weeks, which will be very important in providing the energy reserves they need to stay alive whilst learning to catch their own food.

But up until now the chicks have been confined to their nest with virtually no exercise, and their flippers have never been used, so the flipper muscles are small and weak.

Now that the chicks can wander out of the nest, they begin exercising their flippers, in order to strengthen their muscles. They can often be seen flapping their flippers up and down vigorously, as though they are excited at the prospect of getting into the ocean. The strength and stamina of their flipper muscles will be very important for the speed they will need to catch food when they begin life on their own in a few short weeks.

The chicks are very sociable, and mix with chicks from adjacent nests. Just as children go out to play with their friends, so too penguin chicks seek out other chicks for company, and it is common to find four or six chicks all in the same burrow. The adults do not mind other chicks visiting their burrow (it provides extra protection for their chicks against predators), but they never let other adults enter their burrow.

This season has been very dry, with very little rain, and this has led to differing fortunes for our colonies. Our penguins in Argentina have benefited from the reduction in rain, and chick survival rates have been high there this season.

The low rain fall has not really affected the vegetation there, which comprises mostly of drought-resistant thorn bushes, with deep root systems that seek out moisture during drought. The penguins use these bushes as cover for their nests, since the soil is too sandy to support burrows..

However here on Magdalena Island in Chile there are no bushes. The vegetation is short grass and small flowering plants, with relatively shallow roots, growing over a sandy soil. These have suffered badly from the drought, and most of the vegetation has died off leaving bare soil. The wind turns this loose sandy soil into dust storms, which in some areas are so severe that they bury the entrance of the burrows, with the penguins still inside.

Ice Ice Baby and the other adults are wise enough and strong enough to dig out the soil that comes into the burrow, but the chicks are not. They very often retreat to the back of the burrow, unaware that they are being sealed into their own tomb by the storm. Recently we have had to dig out several burrows to rescue the chicks trapped inside. If it were not for the burrow markers we use to name the penguins, many of the burrows would have completely vanished from sight.

Rain is desperately needed to restore the short grass cover, which in turn is needed to stabilise the soil in order to secure the long-term future of these penguins.

The chicks will begin leaving the colony in a few weeks, and I will write to you again when that exodus begins.

ICE ICE BABY our Adopted Penguin

Today we are reprinting the letter from Michael Bingham, the correspondant for Ice Ice Baby, our Magellanic penguin. AND we have photos! Ice Ice Baby is sitting on two eggs today, and we'll keep you updated on the progress of our flock. (Hey, are a bunch of penguins a flock?)

Dear Icebar Orlando

Thank you for supporting our penguin adoption programme with the adoption of Ice Ice Baby.

Your adopted penguin is a Magellanic penguin of about 5 years old.

Magellanic penguins are only found around southern South America in Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands. Each year we monitor population changes at selected breeding sites throughout their breeding range, and money raised through our penguin adoption programme pays for this work.

See www.seabirds.org/penguinstudysites.htm to see where we work. Click on each link for more information on each of our study sites.

At the beginning of each breeding season we visit our selected study sites and examine each and every nest to see how many breeding pairs are in the colony. This allows us to record any population changes, since Magellanic penguins return to the same colony to breed each year. This work has revealed a 90% population decline over the last 20 years in the Falkland Islands, whilst populations in nearby Chile and Argentina have increased.

As well as population counts, we also monitor all our adopted penguins throughout the season, in order to see how many eggs hatch, and how many chicks survive. By monitoring penguins over a number of years we are able to spot differences in breeding success, and find the causes of population decline.

These studies have shown that in the Falkland Islands, breeding success is much lower than in nearby Chile and Argentina, due to chick starvation in the Falklands. Chick survival in the Falklands is less than one third of that of Chile and Argentina because commercial fishing around the Falklands makes it hard for penguins to find food for their chicks.

In Chile and Argentina, where commercial fishing is banned close to penguin colonies, chicks are fed every 12 to 14 hours. In the Falklands, where there is no such protection from commercial fishing, chicks are fed every 34 hours. The lower abundance of food resulting from commercial fishing means that adult penguins must spend over twice as long finding food to feed their chicks in the Falklands. As a result, chicks in the Falklands receive less than half the amount of food, so few chicks survive, leading to population decline.

In September 2000, members of the International Penguin Conservation Work Group passed a resolution calling for no-fishing zones around penguin breeding sites in the Falkland Islands, as has been done in Chile and Argentina. Unfortunately the Falkland Islands Government have refused to honour this, despite the decline in penguin numbers.

Another potential threat to penguins is tourism, however our studies into the effects of tourism show no differences in breeding success for sites visited by tourists and those which are not. This is good news for anyone wishing to visit their penguin. They can be confident that their visit will not cause disturbance, and that we are monitoring the affects of tourism on penguins.

Our adoption programme runs for one year, although of course it can be renewed each year to follow the same penguin. Magellanic penguins arrive at the breeding sites in September, which is when we begin our monitoring work.

Eggs are laid during October, and chicks hatch during December. Chicks leave in February, but adults that have reared young remain around the breeding site until April.

Between April and September, Magellanic penguins remain entirely at sea, migrating northwards up the coast of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, where the austral winter offers longer hours of daylight and warmer waters.

Throughout the breeding season you will be kept updated as to how your penguin is doing - when the eggs are laid, when they hatch, and how the chicks fare. We will also send you a photo of any chicks.

Whacky Wednesday

We adopted our first penguin from the wonderful folks at http://www.penguins.cl/. The name of the penguin is Ice Ice Baby. This International Penguin Conservation Workgroup has the cooperation of many of the best penguin research and conservation organizations and is a collaborative effort that will benefit all the habitats.

Did you know? Penguins can run faster than most men, and swim faster than most fish! Skeletons have been found that are about 50 million years old. These guys are designed to be the best fishermen in the world. While penguins are perfectly adapted to the environment in which they live, they are less able to cope with alterations of the environment brought about by commercial fishing, oil pollution and coastal development.

We'll be working to help make changes in the dangerous practices of some folks that are threatening the penguin existence. You can help! Adopt your own penguin, or just join us at Icebar Orlando on any Sunday where we feature Little Penguin Wine and donate all proceeds to Arctic and Antarctic preservation.