Penguin food
- The young gather in groups
while the parents are foraging for food.
- When the parents return, the
chicks often have to chase for food, with the stronger chicks
being fed first.
- They spend much time preening
themselves and each other.
- Among the small species is the
black footed penguin, Spheniscus demersus, which lays two eggs in
a scraped hollow in the ground.
- Black footed penguins have
declined in numbers, at first because of egg-collecting by humans,
but more recently because of overfishing, which deprives them of
food, and to oil spills near their breeding colonies.
- Rockhoppers are seafarers for
seven months a year, fishing for squid and krill in the ocean,
looking for food-rich water known as the Antarctic
Convergence.
- When the chick hatches after
about 5 weeks, it is nearly naked,and a scrawny-necked blob of
hunger.
