40 Fun Facts About Macaroni Penguin

English sailors named the macaroni penguin after 'macaronis', who in 18th-century Britain were what?

Showy fashionable men called macaronis wore tall powdered wigs, and sailors saw the same flair in the penguin's yellow crest. The dandies took their nickname from the pasta they met on tours of Italy.

Which American song about a feather in a hat uses 'macaroni' in the same sense as the macaroni penguin?

Yankee Doodle began as a British army joke at the expense of colonial troops, who then took up the tune as their own. It is now the state song of Connecticut.

Which record does the macaroni penguin hold among the world's penguin species?

Most numerous of all penguins, the macaroni has several million breeding pairs. Even so, its colonies have been shrinking since the mid-1970s.

Which objects do macaroni penguins sometimes swallow on purpose, perhaps as ballast for deep dives?

Small stones up to about 30 mm across are swallowed deliberately. Besides acting as ballast, they may help grind up the hard-shelled prey the birds eat.

Which prey makes up over 90% of the macaroni penguin's food during the breeding season?

Krill fuel the colonies: macaroni penguins are reckoned to eat about 9.2 million tonnes a year, making the species the biggest consumer of marine life among all seabirds.

A macaroni penguin lays two eggs each season; what usually becomes of the much smaller first egg?

It rarely survives: the first egg is under two-thirds the size of the second and is usually lost. All crested penguins lay a small egg, then a big one, yet raise only one chick.

After the summer breeding season, where do macaroni penguins spend the next six months?

Far out at sea is home for half the year: birds tracked through one winter swam more than 10,000 km across the Indian Ocean without once coming ashore.

What name is given to the huddles macaroni penguin chicks form while the adults are off feeding?

Crèches take their name from a French term for childcare. Huddling together keeps the downy chicks warm and safer from predators until their adult feathers grow in.

Why do macaroni penguins sit ashore without eating for three to four weeks once a year?

They are moulting, replacing every feather, and cannot enter the water to feed until the new coat is complete. The birds spend about two weeks fattening up first.

Which apex predator, whose only natural enemy is the orca, hunts adult macaroni penguins in the water?

Leopard seal jaws are massive, with teeth 2.5 cm long. Fur seals and killer whales also take adult macaroni penguins at sea, though undisturbed colonies on land lose few birds.

Macaroni penguins can drink seawater thanks to a salt-removing gland found where on the body?

Above the eyes sits the supraorbital gland, which filters excess salt from the bloodstream. The salt then leaves as a concentrated fluid through the nasal passages.

Which white-faced penguin is so close to the macaroni penguin that some call them one species?

Royal penguins breed only around Macquarie Island, and their DNA is so similar that some ornithologists treat them as a subspecies of the macaroni. The two split about 1.5 million years ago.

What kind of nest does a macaroni penguin make on the crowded slopes where it breeds?

A shallow scrape in the ground is all it makes, sometimes lined with a few pebbles or some grass. In the middle of a colony the nests sit only about 66 cm apart.

What colour are the eyes of an adult macaroni penguin?

Red eyes mark out the adults, while juveniles have brownish ones and little or no crest. The macaroni's bulbous bill, by contrast, is orange-brown.

Which seabirds, known for robbing other birds of their catch, take macaroni penguin eggs and chicks?

Skuas patrol penguin colonies for unguarded eggs and chicks, and will also kill sick or injured adults. Over the ocean they chase other seabirds until they give up their food.

The macaroni penguin's black back and white belly hide it in the water through which form of camouflage?

Countershading works both ways: seen from below, a pale belly is hard to pick out against the bright surface, while a dark back hides the bird from above.

Heard Island, home to about a fifth of the world's macaroni penguins, is a remote territory of which country?

Australia governs Heard Island as a nature reserve and World Heritage Site in the far southern Indian Ocean. More than a million pairs of macaroni penguins breed there.

For the first 23 to 25 days after a macaroni penguin chick hatches, which family member guards it?

Its father stands guard and keeps it warm, since the chick has few feathers yet, while the mother goes to sea and brings back food.

Besides warming seas, which industry is thought to threaten macaroni penguins by cutting their food supply?

Commercial fishing for the same swarming prey may leave less for the birds, and a 2008 study warned that breeding females could suffer as a result. Marine pollution is a further worry.

After widespread declines since the mid-1970s, the macaroni penguin sits in which IUCN threat category?

Vulnerable is one step short of Endangered on the IUCN scale. The species earned it after colonies such as South Georgia's lost about half their birds in two decades.

The macaroni penguin belongs to the genus Eudyptes, a name built from Ancient Greek words meaning what?

Good diver suits a bird that has been recorded plunging 100 metres down. Its species name, chrysolophus, is Greek as well and describes the golden crest.

Male and female macaroni penguins look alike, but researchers can tell them apart by measuring what?

Beak size is the giveaway: a male's averages about 6.1 cm, a female's about 5.4 cm. Males are slightly larger overall too.

What colour are the legs and feet of a macaroni penguin, matching a patch of bare skin on its face?

Pink legs and feet match a strip of bare skin running from the eye to the base of the bill. The flippers are blue-black on top with a white trailing edge.

Macaroni penguins usually hunt 15 to 70 metres down by day; how do their night-time dives compare?

Much shallower is the rule after dark, when dives reach only 3 to 6 metres. Even by day, a dive rarely lasts longer than two minutes.

At South Georgia, what do about three-quarters of macaroni penguin pairs do the following year?

Breed together again is what most pairs do. Once reunited at the nest, the two birds bow, trumpet and preen each other.

Macaroni penguins breed on islands off the southern coast of which South American country?

Chile's far south has breeding colonies, though the species has disappeared from one former site, Isla Recalada. Nearly all other macaroni penguins nest on remote subantarctic islands.

Most macaroni penguins nest on subantarctic islands, but one colony is known on which part of the mainland?

Antarctic Peninsula nesting is the exception for a species that otherwise keeps to islands ringing the Southern Ocean. The peninsula marks the southern edge of its range.

Macaroni penguins have been recorded interbreeding with which smaller penguin at Heard and Marion Islands?

Rockhopper and macaroni parents produced three hybrids recorded by a research expedition in 1987–88. Both birds are crested penguins, with yellow plumes on the head.

The macaroni penguin was first described for science in 1837 from birds of which South Atlantic islands?

The Falklands supplied the birds studied by the naturalist Johann Friedrich von Brandt, who named the species. The penguin's common name was first recorded there too, early in the 19th century.

Why does a macaroni penguin flatten its feathers and hunch low in the 'slender walk' through a colony?

To avoid fights, a bird makes itself small as it passes other nests: the walk is a submissive signal. Squabbles are a constant risk because nests sit less than a metre apart.

On South Georgia, macaroni penguin nests are sometimes tucked into clumps of which tall coastal grass?

Tussock grasses grow as separate clumps or hummocks rather than forming a lawn. Elsewhere a macaroni penguin nests on bare mud or gravel among the rocks.

What do scientists call the macaroni penguin ritual of bowing, then stretching the neck up and braying?

Ecstatic display is how a male advertises his territory and attracts a partner, and pairs repeat it when they swap incubation shifts.

A macaroni penguin egg is incubated in three stints of about 12 days each; who sits through the first?

Both parents share the opening stint, then each takes a turn alone while the other feeds. The whole job lasts about five weeks.

DNA evidence points to which penguin as the closest living relative of the macaroni and other crested penguins?

Yellow-eyed penguins split from the crested line about 15 million years ago. They were once thought to be closer kin to the little penguin instead.

Which speck of land off South Georgia hosts a British station that has long monitored macaroni penguins?

Bird Island was named by Captain Cook's expedition in 1775 for the vast numbers of birds seen there. Scientists at its station log tagged macaroni penguins through an electronic gateway as they come and go.

Noisy macaroni penguin colonies fall noticeably quieter at which point in the breeding season?

When the males are away feeding, the din drops: males bray and trumpet to claim nest sites and attract partners. The racket peaks early in the season.

Once their adult feathers have grown in at about 60 to 70 days, what do macaroni penguin chicks do?

Head out to sea is the next step, and the youngsters go on their own, without their parents. They will be five or six years old before they breed themselves.

Like other penguin eggs, a macaroni penguin's egg has a relatively thick shell for which reason?

To resist breaking is the reason, as with other penguin eggs. The contents are roughly two-thirds egg white, with the rest split between yolk and shell.

Crested penguins such as the macaroni reach their greatest variety around which country and its outlying islands?

New Zealand and its outlying islands are home to the Fiordland, Snares and erect-crested penguins. The macaroni breeds far away, on islands scattered around the Southern Ocean.

Marion Island, where macaroni penguins breed in the southern Indian Ocean, is administered by which country?

South Africa runs a weather and biology research station on Marion Island, one of the two Prince Edward Islands. Its staff are the only people living there.