TRELEW, Argentina (January 19, 2018) – Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day this Saturday January 20th, WCS has released an incredibly cute video shot by WCS’s Graham Harris on Isla Martillo in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. A colony of 4,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) live on the island. Most pairs have two healthy chicks indicating a good year with abundant food. The chick in the video was a little too enthusiastic in begging for food from one of its parents and takes a harmless tumble.

In other penguin news, Dr. Dee Boersma of the University of Washington and WCS recently reported that a Magellanic penguin a WCS volunteer group team tagged in 1985 as a chick in Punta Tombo, Argentina, was recently sighted with a nest in in Peninsula Valdes 300 km north. His band number had not been recorded since he was a chick. He is now 33-years-old and one of the oldest known birds in the database for Punta Tombo – one of the longest continuously running penguin studies in the world. WCS says the Magellanic penguin breeding range on the coast of Patagonia has drifted north since the 1960s as a result of changing food availability at sea and possibly a consequence of climate change. 

WCS has seven species of penguins at three of its parks: the Bronx Zoo has Magellanic and little blue penguins; Central Park Zoo has king, gentoo, chinstrap, and macaroni penguins; and the New York Aquarium has African black-footed penguins.

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