Males dive deeper, but female Magellanic penguins swim further for food and get stranded as far away as the Brazilian coast, according to new research.
Magellanic penguins. (Credit: Takashi Yamamoto)
It seems that the males are larger, heavier, and stronger so can dive deeper for forward, the females have to migrate further to sate their appetites, travelling further from mating grounds simply means more exposure to risks on the outward and inward journeys. Science wasn’t aware of this sexual dimorphism in behaviour until this latest tracking experiment. It seems that it’s the juvenile females that get stranded more frequently than the adults.
Weather and human activity are mentioned as risk factors in the research paper itself.
We decided to forego the traditional seeing in the New Year for 2019* and had an early night instead so that we could get up to head north for New Year’s Day. By north I mean Norfolk and RSPBs Titchwell and Snettisham, specifically. Arrived at Titchwell at about 10am, lots of the usual garden birds on the feeders at the visitor centre, Water Rail in the ditch, Ring-tailed Hen Harrier along the west marsh and Long-tailed and Eider ducks not too far from the shore.
Apparently, there was a competition underway for someone to tick 100 birds on the reserve, the wardens got to about 72 different species, by the end of our visit we’d clocked a mere 54 or so different species and probably a couple more we simply didn’t recognise, in no particular order:
Also so Stonechat at Snettisham later in the day having watched huge flocks of Golden Plover (1000s), Lapwing and Oystercatcher (100s) and 1000s of Knott doing their high-tide flocking.
Water Rail (Rallus aquaticus)Water Rail (Rallus aquaticus)Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus) – Female or juvenile referred to as “ring-tailed”
