Penguins | Sphenisciformes

Pinguïns | Esfenisciformes

Seabirds in which the wing has become a stiff, narrow paddle: the elbow and wrist joints are all but locked, so the whole blade moves as one piece and the bird genuinely flies underwater instead of rowing. The bones are solid and heavy rather than hollow, which makes diving cheap. The feathers are short and stiff and packed like roof tiles, with a downy base that holds a layer of air; beneath the skin lies fat. In the legs and the flippers the warm blood runs alongside the cold returning blood, so the heat stays in the body. On land they stand upright on short legs set far back; they feed only at sea and breed ashore.

Families in this order

Penguins | Spheniscidae9 speciesThe 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.