Penguins

Penguins rank high in the list of popular birds, mostly because of the upright posture and neat appearance, and there is certainly something very attractive about these birds from the cold waters of the far south.  No other birds are built quite like them but they vary a lot in size, from the Fairy Blue Penguin of New Zealand standing only 12 inches, to the huge Emperor Penguin, standing 48 inches and never setting foot on land, for it nests on the permanent ice far inside the Antarctic Circle.  Penguins' wings are no use in the air but they make most efficient flippers for underwater flight.

There are 17 species of Penguin and they are all only found in the southern hemisphere

The Penguins at Natureland are known as Black-footed or Jackass Penguins from their strange braying noises; they live in 'rookeries' of hundreds of thousands on the islands off Cape Town.There they breed in the southern spring and summer -from October- and in the English climate they keep the samerhythm, which means that the two eggs are due to hatch towards Christmas. All sorts of materials go into the large untidy nest-sticks, straw and so on -and these penguins prefer nesting under some cover, like the rock shelters built from them.From the first weeks the chicks are bundles of grey fluff which gives way to a juvenile plumage of proper waterproof feathers in a mixture of greys.  A year later it molts into the smart black and white plumage of the adult.