Penguin

“ And the holy Maël, having wept and prayed, armed himself with the mighty Name of the Lord and said to the birds:
“Be ye men!”
Immediately the penguins were transformed. Their foreheads enlarged and their heads grew round like the dome of St. Maria Rotunda in Rome. Their oval eyes opened more widely on the universe; a fleshy nose clothed the two clefts of their nostrils; their beaks were changed into mouths, and from their mouths went forth speech; their necks grew short and thick; their wings became arms and their claws legs; a restless soul dwelt within the breast of each of them. ”

“ This was the first sight we had of a rookery of the little Adélie penguin. Hundreds of thousands of birds dotted the shore, and there were many thousands in the sea round the ship. As we came to know these rookeries better we came to look upon these quaint creatures more as familiar friends than as casual acquaintances. Whatever a penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away. ”

“ They found that this river was only navigable by the boat for twenty miles. On their return, the boat was sent to Penguin Island, by which we learnt that the penguins dried to our entire satisfaction, and were in infinite numbers. This penguin is shaped like a bird, having stumps only in place of wings, by which it swims under water as swiftly as any fish. They live upon smelts, which are found in vast abundance on this coast. In eating, these penguins seem neither fish nor flesh. ”

“ I thought the penguins would peck it off. Boys, that penguin was as slippery as a greased pig and as fat as butter. Oh, dear, what a misadventure, and I've ruined a good suit of clothes and broken a bottle of specimens I had in the pockets. ”

“ Living part of the year in the water, and passing most of the remainder on land, Nature has, in a manner, adapted them for these widely differing modes of life. The dirty greyish-brown attire of the young contrasts so strongly with the gay plumage of the old penguin, that at the first glance they hardly seem to belong to the same species. ”

“ The icy water, Murphy thought, might preserve them for years. The hills, away from the sea, seem a surprising place for the graveyard of such aquatic birds as the penguins, but it correlates with another peculiarity of their mental makeup. They like to nest on high land, or at least far from the sea. The blind instinctiveness of much penguin behavior is well shown by these birds when there is no high land on their nesting island. Then they may nest so far from the beach on which they land that they are close to the water on the other side. ”

“ Louis Gain, of the French Antarctic expedition, gives us the following description:
“The Adélie penguin is a brave animal, and rarely flees from danger. If it happens to be tormented, it faces its aggressor and ruffles the black feathers which cover its back. Then it takes a stand for combat, the body straight, the animal erect, the beak in the air, the wings extended, not losing sight of its enemy. ”

“ Nevertheless, anyone who sees a living penguin for the first time will always be attracted and interested, both by the dignified Emperor penguin, with his three feet of stature, and by the bustling little Adelie. ”

“ The virgin answered:
“To-morrow at sunrise, O Maël, you will summon the people together on the hill in front of the desolate moor that extends to the Coast of Shadows, and you will take care that no man of the Penguins remains less than five hundred paces from those rocks so that he may not be poisoned by the monster’s breath. And the dragon will come out of the rocks and I will put my girdle round his neck and lead him like an obedient dog.” ”

“ How confident it feels upon the sea may be imagined when we learn that Sir James Ross once saw two penguins swimming calmly along a thousand miles from the nearest land.
The penguin is an enormous eater. It has a very long stomach, which reaches to the lower part of the body, and is capable, in the case of a large bird, of holding more than two pounds of fish. The largest kind of penguin may be from three to four feet tall, and will weigh about eighty pounds. ”

“ We find the penguin exactly to answer Sir John Narborough's description; therefore we beg leave to give it the reader in that excellent navigator's own words: "The penguin is a fowl that lives by catching and eating fish, which he dives for, and is very nimble in the water; he is as big as a brant goose, and weighs near about eight pounds; they have no wings, but flat stumps like fins; their coat is a downy stumped feather; they are blackish grey on the backs and heads, and white about their necks and down their bellies ”

“ Penguins are very plenty, and of these there are four different kinds. The royal penguin, so called from its size and beautiful plumage, is the largest. The upper part of the body is usually gray, sometimes of a lilac tint; the under portion of the purest white imaginable. The head is of a glossy and most brilliant black, the feet also. The chief beauty of plumage, however, consists in two broad stripes of a gold color, which pass along from the head to the breast. ”

“ Bird life on sea and land is fairly abundant, the most common forms being the skua gull, snow petrels, and the various species of penguins. The penguins are specially adapted for an aquatic life, and depend for their food entirely on marine animals. The largest species, the emperor penguin, inhabits the most southerly coast known on the edge of the Great Barrier, and there it breeds at mid-winter, very interesting specializations of structure and habit making this apparently impossible feat practicable. ”

“ The only deviation from these acknowledged tracks was made when one or more of us ten human beings appeared near their road. Then the Penguin who first discovered us, with a hoarse little croak, would break the line and start off towards us. On reaching us he would stop, and gradually all the Penguins would stop behind him, in the same way as railway carriages stop when the engine ahead is pulled up. The first Penguin, having inspected us from one point of view, would start to walk round us, the others gravely following. ”

“ The commander of the Beagle was Captain FitzRoy, who has also told us something about the penguins. He says that, when feeding its young, “the old bird gets on an eminence, and makes a great noise between quacking and braying, holding its head up in the air, as if it were haranguing the penguinnery” (a much better word, I think, than the “penguin-rookery”) , “while the young one stands close to it, but a little lower. ”

“ On land the penguin uses its wings as fore-legs, and crawls or runs on four feet, as it were, so quickly that, on a grassy cliff, it might be mistaken for some kind of quadruped. Living in regions which are rarely visited by man, these birds have not yet learned to dread him, but often stand still until they are knocked down with a stick. They are very courageous. A naturalist tells us how he attempted to stop one as it was going down to the sea. ”

“ They are more timid than any other species of penguin, and leave the nests in a body when one ventures into the rookery. The skuas take advantage of this peculiarity to the length of waiting about till a chance presents itself, when they swoop down, pick up an egg with their beak and fly off. The penguin makes a great fuss on returning to find that the eggs are gone, but generally finishes up by sitting on the empty nest. ”

“ Presently we stopped, lowered the surf-boat and dispatched a crew ashore to bring off Douglas and Carr, and, if possible, secure some penguins for food, as our preserved stores required the most careful shepherding, by reason of the lengthy cruise ahead of us. The doctor and I, on landing, took sticks and proceeded up the hill as if for a wager. The penguin can waddle along at a considerable pace on level ground; but up a gradient he is clumsy and handicapped, and a man can beat him easily. ”

“ Fred asked how large the ordinary penguin is.
"There are several varieties of these birds," said his informant, "the largest being the Emperor Penguin, which weighs twenty-five or thirty pounds, and I have known them to tip the scale at very nearly forty. The old birds are so tough and fishy that a dog won't touch them, but the chickens are good eating. I have tried the eggs, but didn't like 'em, as they resembled a hen's egg cooked in lamp-oil. Penguins only go on shore during the breeding season ”

“ As night advanced, the cry of the penguin was heard above the storm, which, added to the increasing quantity of heavy loose ice we met with, contributed to increase our apprehensions of dropping down upon the land or barrier under our lee, although we have frequently met with these birds at several hundreds of miles from any known land. ”

“ There are many species of Penguins, the handsomest probably being the Crested Penguin, which is a native of Patagonia, and has a very conspicuous appearance. These Birds are called by sailors, regardless of species, Jackass Penguins, from their habit, when on shore, of throwing their head backwards, and of making a strange loud noise very like the braying of a Donkey.
This family all defend themselves vigorously with their beaks when an attempt is made to lay hands on them; and when pursued, they will pretend to retreat, and return immediately, throwing themselves upon their assailant. ”

“ Their feet, like those of the auks, are placed so far back that the body is quite upright when the bird is standing on the ground, a position which renders their gait uncommonly slow and awkward, but greatly facilitates their movements in the water. When at sea and fishing, the penguin comes to the surface for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so instantaneously, that at first sight no one can be sure that it is not a fish leaping for sport. ”

“ All day these floes, often crowded to their utmost capacity, would float past the rookery. Often a knot of hesitating penguins on the ice-foot, on being hailed by a babel of voices from a floe, would suddenly make the plunge, and all swim off to join their friends for the rest of the journey, and I have seen a floe so crowded that as a fresh party boarded it on one side, many were pushed off the other side into the water by the crush. ”

“ The penguin, with its flippers, can fly only on the water, and has to waddle when on land. Certain grebes which find their food in lakes have also lost their power of flight. This is true of some pigeons, auks, parrots, grebes, ducks and other birds which have not found it necessary to obtain their food by flying. ”

“ I remember being lost in admiration of the quiet blue lanes of water, blue and violet, and the many pearl-like tints of the ice, and as I looked northerly I was astonished to see penguins jumping on to the floe ice in a great hurry, down the sides of one of these long lanes. Penguins do not show themselves in the water, they suddenly leap out like trout and disappear. ”

“ They walk, as a rule, with the whole shank, as well as the actual foot resting on the surface of the rock, but sometimes they will draw themselves up so that they stand upon the foot, or rather the toes, alone, just in the way in which a penguin does, and in this attitude they can both walk and run. ”

“ This species is above three feet long, and weighs above thirty pounds. The King Penguin inhabits the seas in the vicinity of Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, and New Georgia, and during the breeding season is very common on the coasts of Patagonia, but it is probable that all the species migrate to considerable distances. ”

“ But now they dispute all the time; they pick quarrels with each other in summer as well as in winter. How greatly have they fallen from that peaceful majesty which made the assembly of the penguins look like the Senate of a wise republic!
“Look towards Surelle, Bulloch, my son. In yonder pleasant valley a dozen men penguins are busy knocking each other down with the spades and picks that they might employ better in tilling the ground. The women, still more cruel than the men, are tearing their opponents’ faces with their nails. ”

“ These birds, in fact, fly through the water, as others do through the air, but they do not look like birds at all, but much more like seals; and indeed the whole shape of a penguin is so much like that of a seal that one might almost mistake him for one, if it were not for his long, narrow bill. This, however, is only when he is in the water, and especially whilst swimming under it—if ever one has the chance of seeing him do that. When on land the bird presents a very different appearance. ”

“ That, indeed, is the general simile which those who have seen these penguin birds in their antarctic dwelling-places make use of, in order to describe their appearance to more stay-at-home people, and the resemblance is increased by their sometimes walking one behind the other in single file, especially when coming up from the water to take their place on the eggs. They walk upon their toes alone, as do some of our own sea-birds—the puffin, for instance, and often the guillemot—but when standing sink down upon the shank—or tarsus, as it is called—that bone which corresponds with our own ankle. ”

“ It would be possible to mount the snow-slope towards the glacier in fine weather, but I did not push my exploration in that direction during the gale. At the seaward end of the spit was the mass of rock already mentioned. A few thousand ringed penguins, with some gentoos, were on these rocks, and we had noted this fact with a great deal of satisfaction at the time of our landing. The ringed penguin is by no means the best of the penguins from the point of view of the hungry traveller, but it represents food. ”

“ They are not covered with feathers, but with stumps, which look more like bristles or scales, and the wings appear to be set on to the body almost the wrong way about. They are not of the smallest use for flying, and the penguin never attempts to do that; but when it takes to the water, the wings are seen to be admirably formed and placed for swimming. ”