Noticing xxii - penguins

Our houseguests this weekend were intrigued by the fact that we are heading to the Antarctic Peninsula in February—so much so that they bought us a mascot:

We are calling him Percival—Percy for short. He is not coming to Antarctica with us.

Indeed, is he even a penguin? A little research was called for. And what I found is this:

Gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua)

• Penguins reside in the Spheniscidae family, from the Greek sphēniskos, 'small wedge', for the shortness of their wings (Percy qualifies on that count alone)
• There are 16–18 recognized species—though arguments can be made for up to 22, and Cape Town's Two Oceans Aquarium lists 26 "types" (or perhaps 27, Percy wonders?)
• All of those however many species are found in the Southern Hemisphere (that would seem to disqualify Percy), and seven are found in Antarctica
• The tallest species is the Emperor penguin, standing almost 4 feet tall; the smallest is the little blue, a diminutive 16 inches (wait, says Percy—that's about my size! maybe I'm a little blue!)
• The fastest penguin is the Gentoo, which can swim at speeds of up to 22 mph (I do not swim, says Percy; if I tried, I believe I would simply float; or possibly sink . . . I really don't know what I'm made of)
• The penguin's black and white coloration is called countershading, and it protects them from predators (oh good, safe from the cats! says Percy)
• Penguins have a special gland behind the eyes—the supraorbital gland—that filters out the seawater they ingest; they excrete it through their beaks, or by sneezing (Percy: I am not too worried about ingesting seawater, and I'm pretty sure I can't sneeze)
• Penguins experience a "catastrophic molt," losing all their feathers all at once, which restricts them to land for a period of two to three weeks (feathers? what's that? asks Percy)
• All but two species of penguins breed in large colonies of up to many tens, or even hundreds of thousands of breeding pairs (I am a very solo penguin, Percy observes—so maybe I'm one of those two species?)
• In some species, it is the male that incubates the eggs while the female goes off hunting for long periods of time (I do not even know whether I'm actually a male, despite my name, says Percy; I may be a Penelope . . . no way to tell, really)
• Ten of the 16–18 species of penguin are listed as vulnerable or endangered; see a list here (I may be a single-individual species, says Percy, but I do not have it tough . . .)
• The first published account of penguins comes from Antonio Pigafetta, who was aboard Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe in 1520. They spotted the birds near what was probably Punta Tombo in Argentina. (He called them "strange geese.") (I am no strange goose!)
• In the 16th century, the word penguin actually referred to great auks (scientific name: Pinguinus impennis), a now-extinct species that inhabited the seas around eastern Canada. When explorers traveled to the Southern Hemisphere, they saw black and white birds that resembled auks and called them penguins (maybe, Percy wonders, I'm actually a great auk?)

Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus)

On our trip we will be traveling with a penguin expert, Dr. Tom Hart, who runs the Penguin Watch project at the University of Oxford. Penguins will be a focus of our journey. In the South Shetland Islands we will see chinstrap and gentoo penguins, as well as southern elephant seals, Weddell seals, and southern fur seals. On the Antarctic Peninsula we will see Adélie and gentoo penguins on their nesting grounds—and crabeater, Weddell, and leopard seals, as well as various whales, including humpbacks, orcas, and perhaps rare beaked whales.

In New Zealand a few years ago, we saw little blue (Eudyptula minor) and yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes). I have also seen little penguins on Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia. I am looking forward to seeing a few more species.

African penguin

David reminded me this evening that on a bird-watching boat trip in New Zealand we ran into someone who was hoping to see all 16/18 species of penguin. That reminds me of my own desire: to see all the kingfishers in the world. But I could start a penguin list too. It'd be shorter, and I've got a good start—including the little African, or Cape, penguins (Spheniscus demersus) on display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Surely they count, even if they're not exactly in the Southern Hemisphere.