Penguin Pandemonium

If only I could get it in my rucksack..

In Patagonia there is a large colony of Magellanic penguins. We went to see them and got to walk through their nesting grounds. They were waddling and swimming and they were flapping and calling to each other. We followed a path past loads of burrows. There were fledglings waiting to be fed, they were so cute!

Here are some penguin facts that I found out:

1. Penguins are black and white so they can hide from predators, the black blends with the sea bed when seen from above and the white with the sky from below.

2. They can peck really hard – the ground in which they dig their burrows is very hard and stony, not ice and snow!

3. Some of the penguins at Punta Tomba swim 500 km for food and then waddle over 1 km uphill to their burrow. No wonder they then spend a lot of time laying down.

4. When ashore for a long time, they lose the feathers around their eyes to help keep cool.

5. Penguins have been around longer than we have – we saw a fossil penguin and there may have been penguins up to 60 million years ago.