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Macaroni Penguin | Eudyptes chrysolophus
Macaronipinguïn | Pingüino de Macarrones
The Macaroni Penguin is a hefty crested penguin with golden-orange plumes that meet on the forehead and a heavy, red-brown bill. On the Prince Edward Islands it is the most numerous penguin, with dense, noisy colonies on steep rocky slopes occupied only in summer.
Voice
In the colony a loud, hoarse, braying trumpet, aa-aa-aa-aaah, with the head swung from side to side, and a fast barking kek-kek-kek in disputes. At sea short barking contact calls.
Recording: Kevin Guille — CC0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 68–72 cm, the largest crested penguin in the region. Head, throat and upperparts are black, the underparts white. Long golden-orange plumes spring from above the eyes, meet in the centre of the forehead and droop back over the sides of the head. The bill is massive and red-brown, with a conspicuous triangle of bare pink skin at the gape. The eye is red. The sexes are alike, the male with a heavier bill. Immatures are smaller, with a dark grey throat, a smaller bill and only a few short yellow feathers above the eye.
Confusion species
Eastern Rockhopper Penguin Eudyptes filholi, which breeds on the same islands, is clearly smaller with a slimmer bill; its yellow brow stripe does not meet on the forehead and runs from the bill to behind the eye. Northern Rockhopper Penguin Eudyptes moseleyi and Western Rockhopper Penguin Eudyptes chrysocome differ in the same way. Immature Macaronis without crests are best told by the heavy bill and the lack of a complete brow stripe.
Habitat
It breeds in very dense colonies on steep, rocky and often bare slopes and in gullies close to the sea, with a nest of pebbles. When breeding it forages tens to hundreds of kilometres from the colony, mainly on krill, other crustaceans and small fish. The winter is spent entirely at sea, far to the south and east of the breeding islands.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region it breeds on Marion and Prince Edward, with several hundred thousand pairs; the largest colony lies on the south-west coast of Marion. A few vagrants have been found on the mainland coast, mainly in the Western and Eastern Cape, usually weakened birds in moult. Beyond the region it breeds on South Georgia, the Crozet Islands, Kerguelen, Heard, Bouvet, the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands, in southern Chile and on the Falkland Islands.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Present on Marion from October to April; during the relief voyage in April–May the last birds, often after moult, are still at the colonies. A Macaroni Penguin on the mainland coast is a major rarity: on any moulting crested penguin check the depth of the bill and the shape of the crest.
Conservation status
Vulnerable. The world population still numbers millions of pairs but has declined sharply since the 1970s, especially on South Georgia; numbers on Marion have also fallen clearly. Likely causes are changes in the availability of krill and other prey with ocean warming, and competition with the krill fishery.
Scientific name
Eudyptes chrysolophus | (Brandt, 1837)
Brandt described the species in 1837 as Catarhactes chrysolophus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Eudyptes was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Eudyptes comes from the Greek eu, 'good', and duptēs, 'diver' — 'good diver', for the agility with which these crested penguins hunt underwater. chrysolophus comes from the Greek khrusos, 'gold', and lophos, 'crest' — for the golden-yellow crest plumes above the eyes. The specimen the first description was based on came from Falkland Islands.