ENVIRONMENT
STRONG PAIR BONDS Around South Africa, northern rockhoppers are usually vagrant moulting juveniles. Southern rockhoppers are rarely seen, although both species are occasionally found bearing capture marks. These animals have probably been caught by fishing boats, kept for entertainment, and then thrown overboard before reaching port to avoid being fined. (It is illegal to keep these birds.) In the wild, however, rockhoppers return to their birth islands in spring, where they gather in loose colonies, fighting and building their nests, either in burrows among tussock grass or on rocks in the open. They establish strong pair bonds and, once mated, a couple will nest and rear chicks together through their lifetimes. Once the nest is ready, the female lays two eggs several days apart, the first smaller than the second. The parents
ISLAND ROCK STARS While rockhopper penguins might be considered the most characterful species in the avian world, they follow a structured, intricate and balanced life cycle. Naturalist Georgina Jones tells us more.
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SEA RESCUE SPRING 2020
PHOTOGRAPH: OTTO WHITEHEAD
P
ERHAPS rockhopper penguins should more accurately be called rockclimbers. So agile are these charming birds that they can nest 250m up on steep cliffs, using their beaks to steady themselves as they jump and clamber up near-vertical rock faces. Rockhoppers are the smallest of the crested penguins, a group of six species of penguins with distinctive yellow crests. They’re not the only penguins to hop over rocks, but since they live on the Falklands, and on Marion, Tristan and Gough islands, they were first to be observed by mariners and so got their name. There are two species of rockhopper penguins: the northern, found on Gough and the Tristan island group, and the southern, which has two subspecies, one around the Falklands and another from the Prince Edward Islands and further east.
