Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PENGUINS

Species of Penguins

About twenty living species of Penguins are known. They are confined exclusively, as already stated, to the Antarctic region, never crossing and rarely even approaching the equator. They are, perhaps, most abundant in species in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands, but they do not range north

Cladomis pachypus, also from the Patagonian Miocene, is regarded by Ameghino as representing a divergent type of Penguin with a very thick leg, but it is imperfectly known, and seems hardly to belong here. of Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic or Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, although they are common about New Zealand and the west shore of Australia, one species occasionally reaching as far north in the Pacific as the Galapagos Islands and another in the South Atlantic to the coasts of South and Southwest Africa.

The causes governing their distribution within this area are not well understood, but apparently it does not depend wholly upon temperature, for at the most northern point reached by them the temperature of the sea is about 620, and from this point they extend their range to water but little above the freezing point.

They exhibit none of the tendencies to perform regular migrations, although they seem well enough fitted to undertake such journeys, and their distribution probably depends upon the food supply. The naturalists of the Challenger expedition did not observe them at any greater distance from land or ice than forty or fifty miles.

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