Penguins | Spheniscidae

Pinguïns | Pingüinos

The smallest species of the family, the Little Penguin, weighs about a kilo and comes ashore only after sunset, walking up the beach in small parties to a burrow under a bush or under a house. The Yellow-eyed Penguin does the opposite: it breeds not in a colony but apart, in forest or dense scrub, and will not tolerate a nest that is visible from the next one. The crested penguins of the subantarctic islands lay two eggs of unequal size, of which as a rule only one yields a chick. Once a year every feather is replaced at once: the bird then stands ashore for two to three weeks, cannot swim, does not feed and loses close to half its weight. Outside that time almost everything is done at sea, up to some hundreds of kilometres offshore.