Today we arrived at Puerto Madryn, a town on the southern east coast, in the area known as Patagonia.
Our destination was approximately 75 miles south (which took 2.5 hours with one quick bathroom break) to Punta Tombo, to the world’s largest penguin rookery. According to our guide, Stella, there are 17 different species of penguins in the world. Punta Tombo houses over 400,000 Magellan Penguins through their spring and summer seasons. This is the time when the 2-foot high sea birds swim south from the waters of Brazil. There, they live in the ocean. Here, they come ashore to nest, lay eggs, hatch and raise their chicks, and grow a new set of feathers that prepares them to return to the sea with their new families. Then they swim back to the warmer waters of Brazil for the autumn and winter.
The rocky area near shore is reddish volcanic rock. The sand is whitish. Apparently, the type of sand and rocks here are good for building nests. To do so, they lay on their sides and dig with their feet. The nests can go down a foot or more and even further horizontally. Many times they are in the shade of a low, spiky bush.
When return from wintering in Brazil, the males arrive before the females. The first time the male arrives, he builds a nest, convinces a female to join him, and they finish the nest together. They are now mated for life. The already mated couples will return to the same nest after they first build one. They do not build new ones, just rearrange and redecorate the old.
If the female arrives and her mate is not here, she will mate with someone else. After all, the clock is ticking and she only has so much time to build this family. If the female does not arrive, the male will wait for her through this season – but next year is a new story.
The female lays two eggs, four days apart, and they incubate for 39 days. The mom and dad take turns sitting on the eggs, but they hatch with the female – (how do they know??) four days apart. They are gray when born with fluffy feathers that are not waterproof. The parents take turns sitting with them, and going to the sea for food for themselves and their babies. That didn’t mean much until we walked from the bus to the grounds and immediately began seeing nests with Penguins – a looooooong way from the sea. Hopefully you can see that in a couple of the pictures.
The parents eat a lot to rebuild body fat. After a month the babies are losing their gray fuzz and getting their waterproof coats. By March, the parents will have shed and grown a new coat, and be ready to swim north to Rio and warmer weather.
The average lifespan is 25 years. Even though you are literally walking within feet – and sometimes inches of the penguins, this is a nature reserve – not a zoo. If the park rangers see birds attacking the eggs or other penguin disasters occurring, they record it, but they do not interfere.
It’s just incredible to walk along and see real, live, wild penguins waddling straight toward you. As Genny said, it seems to show some of God’s great sense of humor. And His amazingly well-planned and detailed design. So here are a few stars. Can you tell the mature from the chicks??
