Adelie Penguin

Description & Distribution...

The Adélie penguin is one of three species in the genus Pygoscelis. Adélie penguins is can usually swim at 9.0 km/h . Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA evidence suggests the genus split from other penguins around 38 million years ago about 2 million years after the ancestors of the genus Aptenodytes. In turn the Adélie penguins split off from the other members of the genus around 19 million years ago.

These penguins are mid-sized being 44 to 70 cm 16 to 26 in height and 3.2 to 6 kg 7.8 to 13.25 bin weight. Distinctive marks are the white ring surrounding the eye and the feathers at the base of the bill. Their appearance is closest to the stereotypical image of penguins as mostly black with a white belly.

Habitat

Antarctica Based on a 2014 analysis of fresh guano-discolored coastal areas. there are 3.80 million breeding pairs of Adélie penguins in 250 breeding colonies. a 53 percent increase over a census completed 20 years earlier. The Adélie penguins breed from October to February on shores around the Antarctic continent shifts typically last for 10 days.The chicks remain in the nest for 20 days before joining creches.

Diet

The Adélie penguin is known to feed mainly on Antarctic krill, ice krill, Antarctic silverfish, sea krill and glacial squid diet varies depending on geographic location during the chick-rearing season.
Reproduction

Adélie penguins arrive at their breeding grounds in October or November, at the end of winter and the start of spring. Their nests consist of stones piled together. In December, the warmest month in Antarctica about −2 °C or 28 °F the parents take turns incubating the egg one goes to feed and the other stays to warm the egg. The Adélie penguin lives on sea ice but needs the ice-free land to breed. The parent who is incubating does not eat. In March the adults and their young return to the sea With a reduction in sea ice populations of the Adélie penguin have dropped by 65% over the past 25 years.

Migration

Adélie penguins living in the Ross Sea region in Antarctica migrate an average of about 13,000 kilometres during the year. as they follow the sun from their breeding colonies to winter foraging grounds and back again. Follow the sun means that during the winter the sun doesn't rise. south of the Antarctic Circle but sea ice grows during the winter months and increases for hundreds of miles from the shoreline and into more northern latitudes all around Antarctica so that as long as the penguins live at the edge of the fast ice there will be sunlight.