Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PENGUINS

Behaviours of Penguins

The feather-covering in the Penguins also affords another interesting feature. With the possible exception of the Screamers they are the only known birds in which there are no bare spaces (apteria). The feathers themselves are narrow, lanceolate, with a very broad, flat shaft, convex beneath, with the ordinary furrow of the lower surface usually wanting.

The aftershaft is distinctly recognizable and is similar to the shaft. No specially formed quills can be detected in the wings, but in the tail stiff quills are usually distinguishable. Beneath the feathers or just under the skin are powerful muscles by means of which the water can be entirely shaken from the feathers as the birds emerge from the icy sea, — a fortunate provision, for otherwise, in the frigid temperature in which they live, they would be masses of ice in a few moments.

The body temperature, stated by Mr. W. Eagle Clarke to be io2°-io3° F., for the Adelie Penguin, is further equalized and maintained by a dense layer of fat beneath the skin not unlike the layer of blubber in seals and cetaceans. The moult takes place quickly, the plumage peeling off, as it were, in large patches, and disclosing to view a short undergrowth of new feathers, the whole process, according to Buller, requiring only two or three days. Other observers place the length of time of actual shedding as within ten days or two weeks.

The moult of the King Penguin has been observed in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, and toward the close of the period the bird was always seen to be busy picking the feathers off, nearly all being removed by its bill, not pulled, but pushed off.”When the moult was nearly completed and only a few dried-up feathers adhered to the back and upper side of the middle of the wings, the epidermal covering of the orange-colored patches on the lower mandibles loosened and came off like pieces of parchment or dry bladder.”This shedding of portions of the epidermal covering is well known in certain Auks and Puffins, but had not been observed previously in members of this group.

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