With Penguin Awareness Day on 20 January, birding expert and author of Guide to Seabirds of South Africa Peter Ryan tells us more about these fascinating creatures.

Immortalised in numerous cartoons, penguins waddle around like caricatures of stuffy gents in tuxedos. Of course the reality is not so cute. Penguin colonies are noisy, smelly and often quite violent places, with frequent altercations between neighbouring birds. Penguins are a bit grumpy when they’re on land, because they are most at home in water.

Much of their popular appeal stems from their upright stance. Penguins’ legs are placed right at the back of their bodies, where they create the least amount of drag, and can assist with steering while swimming. Their ancestors gave up the ability to fly in air in order to become supreme swimmers. Their wings have been reduced to rigid flippers that are used to ‘fly’ underwater.

And this is just one adaptation to a life at sea. Their eyes are able to focus underwater, because they hunt by sight, and even their ears are modified to hear underwater. Many species only come ashore to breed and moult, spending the rest of the year at sea. Some penguins even return to land with goose barnacles attached to their tails or feet!

Penguins vary in size from the diminutive Little Penguin of Australasia (30 cm) to Antarctica’s Emperor Penguin (1.2 m); some extinct species stood up to 2 m tall. The larger the penguin, the longer and deeper it can dive. Emperor Penguins have been recorded diving for up to 22 minutes, and attaining depths in excess of 500 metres.

Although all penguins follow the classic back and white tuxedo pattern, there are variations on this basic theme. Most of the species-specific patterns are on the head and neck, which is visible when the birds rest at the sea surface. Males and females look alike, although males average slightly larger than females. However, juveniles often look different from their parents, possibly to reduce aggression.

Of the 18 species of penguins alive today, only one breeds in Africa. It used to be known as the Jackass Penguin, after its raucous, braying call. However, its name was changed to African Penguin to distinguish it from three similar species in South America that make the same donkey-like call.

African Penguins breed at islands off the coast of southern Namibia and South Africa east to Algoa Bay. At the start of the 20th Century there were several million African Penguins, but their numbers have fallen due to a plethora of human impacts: egg and guano collecting, oil pollution, introduced diseases and climate change. The biggest impact in the last 50 years has been the collapse of sardine and anchovy stocks due to over-fishing. Currently there are barely 40,000 African Penguins, and the species is listed as Endangered.

The shortage of fish off the west coast of southern Africa has seen numerous colonies go extinct. As colonies dwindle, it becomes increasingly difficult for penguins to catch enough fish, because they are most efficient when they work together to corral fish schools. Unfortunately there are few islands along the south coast where penguins can breed. BirdLife South Africa is trying to establish a new mainland colony on a headland in De Hoop Nature Reserve that has been fenced off to exclude terrestrial predators.

In the 1980s, mainland colonies formed in residential areas at Simonstown and Betty’s Bay, where the presence of people provided some protection from predators. However, occasional penguins still fall victim to dogs, caracals and even leopards! Despite this, the colony in Betty’s Bay is the only one that is increasing in size, thanks to an abundance of fish nearby. Conservationists are now asking the South African government to stop fishing close to penguin colonies to try to help African Penguins to survive.

This article was originally published in The Penguin Post, a magazine from Penguin Random House South Africa. 

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Books by this author

Guide to Seabirds of Southern Africa by Peter Ryan
Seabirds hold a special place in the hearts of birders, not least because of the challenge of getting to grips with a group of birds that is largely inaccessible, and living in an often hostile habitat. Focusing exclusively on the nearly 1,000 birds that occur around the southern African coastline and adjacent Southern Ocean, this is an authoritative, first-of-its-kind, essential, volume for birders’ libraries.

Guide to Birds of the Kruger National Park by Warwick Tarboton and Peter Ryan
The Kruger National Park, one of the largest and best-known conservation areas in the world, supports a remarkable diversity of birds. This attractive and handy field guide provides full-colour photographs, detailed distribution maps and succinct information on 400 of these – all the species that a visitor is likely to encounter in the park.

Sasol Birds of Southern Africa 5th Ed. by Ian Sinclair, Phil Hockey, Warwick Tarboton, Niall Perrins, Dominic Rollinson and Peter Ryan
This revised edition has been brought fully up to date by its expert author panel. With more than 800 new illustrations, fully revised text, maps and plate annotations, comprehensive coverage of the region’s birds and so much more, this best-selling guide is sure to maintain its place as one of Africa’s most trusted field guides.

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WIN! With Struik Nature and African Birdlife

One lucky new subscriber to African Birdlife magazine will win a hamper of Struik Nature books to the value of R1000!

Subscribing for only R340 gets you a 12-month local subscription to African Birdlife magazine, which includes six bi-monthly issues filled with expert info on our continent’s magnificent birds. You also get to show your support for the invaluable work in bird research and conservation being done by Birdlife South Africa.

To subscribe and automatically get entered into the draw for this hamper, visit www.birdlife.org.za. Ts & Cs apply. Entries close 28 February 2022.

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Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Guide to Birds of the Kruger National Park Guide to Seabirds of Southern Africa Penguin Random House SA Peter Ryan Sasol Birds of Southern Africa The Penguin Post