King penguins have migrated from the Antarctic region to the South Australian coastline, where they are likely to remain on land for a “catastrophic molt”.
Members of a local birding association were surprised to find the bird on the coast, thousands of kilometers from its normal habitat.
Every year, penguins lose all their feathers. Then, over a period of 2-3 weeks, replace it with a freshly oiled, waterproof, polished one. During those weeks, they have no protection from the icy water, so they seek land, usually closer to home.
Geoff Campbell, chairman of Friends of Shorebirds South East, was part of a group of eight people conducting a bird survey along Coorong Beach when the penguin was spotted.
“We saw a penguin coming out of the water and coming up to the beach… it was a big penguin,” he said.
“It came right up to us. It was displaying to us and doing what bird watchers call an advertising display. It threw its head back and screamed very loudly. , then bowed to us.
“It happened a few times. It came right up to us… right next to us… you’re not supposed to get close to these things, but it came right up to us.”
Mr Campbell said this was “quite surprising” but not entirely unheard of, revealing that king penguins were discovered at Port MacDonnell, near Mt Gambier, in 2004.
The bird appeared to be “very healthy and very fat,” he said.
King penguins are related to the larger emperor penguin, but prefer subantarctic islands to Antarctic ice shelves.
The Macquarie Island Conservation Foundation describes them as:A curious and sociable bird that breeds in colonies.”. Like emperor penguins, they lay a single egg, which they tuck onto their feet to incubate and cover with a brood pouch (a flexible piece of skin).
Macquarie Island, about halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica, is home to about 120,000 king penguin pairs.
Dr Julie McInnes, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Research, Ecology and Biodiversity, suspects this is where the visitors came from.
“Sometimes penguins come to the mainland…often to molt,” she says.
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“They come ashore for a devastating molt.”
This is called a catastrophic molt because unlike other birds that may lose some feathers, penguins lose all of their feathers.
“So they come to shore for two to three weeks. They lose all their feathers and they are replaced with new waterproof feathers,” McInnes said.
“They weren’t waterproof at the time, so they had fasted for several weeks before coming ashore, so they were thick and rounded. Shedding their skin is quite expensive energetically, so they put their feet in the water and lay quietly. That’s their ideal environment.”
He said mainland Australia was the furthest part of the penguin’s range, and global warming was changing their distribution, but penguins would likely seek cooler waters.
It’s also possible that the penguin just went off the beaten path in search of land. Penguins usually molt on colony islands.
“If they’re molting, they can’t go into the water, so it’s unfortunate that we found an area that was quite crowded,” McInnes said.
She said anyone who wants to see it should do so from a distance and not risk scaring it into the water.
“They waterproof their feathers. They have grooming glands that soak oil into their feathers so they can get out again,” she said.
“I hope so because it’s a long way from home.”
