Week 16: Sa 10 February 2018, 18:18. Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, Antarctica
Considering chinstrap penguins and gentoo penguins come here for the same purposes – procreation and chick rearing – it’s pretty entertaining to see the number of ways in which they differ. I generally prefer gentoos to the chinnies, but Nai feels the opposite.
In terms of appearances, I consider gentoos to be one of the bird species I’ve worked with that has the sexiest markings. They have bright orange-red bills, orange feet, clean white fronts, dark bodies, and beautiful white speckling that spreads from behind the eyes to span the crown of the head. They’re gorgeous!
Chinstraps have dark bodies, moderately white fronts, black bills, and a black strap that crosses below the chin on an otherwise white face. It’s that chinstrap that biases me away from them; the chinstrap facial hair of some humans often seems to go along with an obnoxious, self-impressed attitude. In similar fashion, the chinnies are too loud and have too much attitude for me.
Chinstraps’ attitudes lie along the lines of “I will destroy you!!!” One was once so bent on defending the nearby chicks from me that it charged and successfully chased me away from the colony’s edge. (Yes, I ran away from a penguin.) Given the strength of the slaps they hand out with their flippers, I chose to save my shins rather than hold my ground. Seriously, chinnies, chill out! Have I ever taken one of your eggs or chicks for keeps? No. I can respect the “Don’t f*@! with me” attitude, but I don’t have to like it.
Gentoos’ attitudes lie along the lines of “AHH! You’re clearly after me! I must run away!” While I admit that it’s unfortunate to feel like I’m frequently scaring gentoos – which also makes it harder to read their bands – it’s better than having a heart attack every time a chinstrap unexpectedly jumps toward me while emitting an amazingly loud call of outrage. Gentoos tend to look around anxiously and then move a few feet away when they feel at risk.
Although gentoos tend to take the ‘flight’ rather than ‘fight’ attitude, they do win when it comes to bravery against predation by brown skuas. Rather unfairly, skuas can fly, meaning they have a whole slew of moves that penguins can’t use. Skuas often stand on the edge of a penguin colony, then move in on foot to scope out nest contents. To grab an egg or chick, they grab a penguin by the tail, pull it off the nest, and then hop over the bird to reach the nest before the penguin can return to it. Watching this predation makes me feel like life isn’t fair, but gentoos don’t let their offspring go so easily.
Enter the Hero Penguins. Hero Penguins are far more often gentoos than chinstraps, and they find it their duty to chase predatory skuas away from the colonies. It doesn’t matter whose nest is being eyed; Hero Penguins often come running, flippers held out, to the rescue. A skua will simply be standing near a colony when a gentoo will come “racing” out of nowhere and force a skua to leave the area. Sometimes the skua will land within 50 feet of its start point and then realize the gentoo is still heading for it. Head down and full of determination, a Hero Penguin is protective, dedicated, and selfless. Respect, Hero Penguins.
Chinstrap penguins are much more mate-oriented than gentoos. From the days of standing around in snow, through copulations and nest building, chinnie mates are more often clearly present than gentoo mates. With their necks stretched skyward, they interact by moving their necks in a snake-like swaying motion and squeaking out their loud calls.
Gentoos tend to ignore each other a lot more – even when both adults are present at the nest. They bow to each other and their nests in greeting… if and when they do decide to acknowledge one another.
The sounds of gentoos are pretty compared to those of chinstraps. I’m not going to try to spell out their sounds, though; I’ll leave that to birding guides. (If you’d like to know what these birds sound like, look up the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I assume that it has good recordings of their vocalizations.) Chinstraps make LOUD, crackly-squeaky calls that startle me enough to make me jump when I’m not expecting them. Gentoos are generally quiet birds that tend to make their trumpeting call at random times, sometimes with their mates and sometimes just because other birds are doing it.
In addition to the above reasons, I prefer gentoos because their colonies are not the “mud”pits in which chinstraps live. I described chinstraps as having “moderately white” fronts because, once the snow’s gone, chinnies can’t really be described as clean. Their colonies are full of a mud-poo slurry that has grown more juicy as the season has progressed. Chinstrap chicks never appear completely clean or dry after roughly their first 2 weeks of life.
Gentoos prefer having a little more personal space and build taller nests that prevent them from living in “mud.” Like gentoos, I prefer a little more personal space than a life of getting splashed with mud and being shouted at and bitten by neighbors.
Although I fully admit that gentoos don’t seem to have much going on upstairs, their chicks seem smarter than chinnie chicks for a couple reasons. Instead of living in wet mud, gentoo chicks move to dry areas outside the colony once it’s time to creche, or leave the nest and hang out as a pack of chicks while the adults are out foraging. Once in a group, they stick together and run from dangers as a group. I imagine that if I were to organize them into ranks and create an army, they’d follow orders without a problem. They’d recognize when to flee and when to fight.
Chinnies, well… that’s another story. I needed to swap out a temporary Velcro band for a metal band on one chick, and during my 5-10 minute search of all the chicks in an area for that specific bird, it didn’t move more than 5 feet. By the time I had identified the black Velcro band beneath the muddy down, all I had to do was bend down and pick up the bird. Like the rest of the chicks, it had made no effort to run. Smart, chinstrap chicks. An army of those guys would freeze up at the first sign of trouble.
Working with these 2 species of penguin has again reminded me of how much personality individual animals can possess. Having also seen a few Adèlie penguins, a king penguin, and a macaroni penguin has made me wonder what each of those species is like. One thing seems certain: taking any sort of measurements of a king penguin would require one person to contain the bird and another to measure.
Although gentoos are my favorite here at Cape Shirreff, I was saddened to see that today brought a mass exodus of chinstrap adults from the colonies. Apparently the time for their “groupthink”-motivated departure had come, and it came without warning for us. They’ll be around to feed their chicks, but it seems the days of full colonies are over.
The change marks the beginning of the end of our fieldwork, and – as usual, I’m not interested in everything that brings. It’s terribly sad when seabirds don’t say goodbye.