Penguins

I have three South Africa blog posts left (including this one) from our late October / early November trip to the very bottom of the Dark Continent. Two of the three are either pretty heavy or involve a lot of research or both. Those two may have to wait until 2026. I think it's OK to stretch this thing out a bit. I do, after all, have plenty of time until our next trip (in March). I want to make sure I do those two posts justice.

In the meantime, here's something a bit lighter. Mostly. Although it will end up being pretty heavy too. And quick.

There have been, and there continue to be, in our travels, some creatures that have continued to elude us trip after trip after trip (we see you, flamingos!). We managed to knock one of those species off our "seen" list on this trip when we ran into two packs of painted dogs on the same day in Kruger National Park. After Kruger and Joburg, we headed over to Cape Town and the Atlantic coast of South Africa for five days or so. Time to take swing at knocking another one of those sought after, but so far elusive, species off our list: penguins.

Our unseen penguins story is not as long and tortured as some other species we have looked for in various corners of the world (we see you again, flamingos!!) but we have chased these flightless birds in both South America and Oceania. In the Galápagos Islands of the coast of Ecuador, we were half-promised a swim with those islands' namesake penguins but missed them entirely. Three or so years later, we managed to see fewer than one hand's worth of penguins on and off New Zealand's Stewart Island, including a couple of empty evenings waiting for the little blue penguins to return home for the night. 

We felt better about our chances with the African penguins near Cape Town in South Africa. And as it turns out, with good reason.

Our first African penguins. On Robben Island.

When we started planning our trip to South Africa, and particularly our time in Cape Town, penguins landed pretty near the top of our must-see list very, very quickly. Blame or credit Netflix's Penguin Town series or just our general research when it came to what to do and see in and around Cape Town. If there was a possibility of penguins, we were in.

There is exactly one species of penguin on the continent of Africa, the aptly and totally appropriately named African penguin. I had never necessarily heard of African penguins growing up as a budding but-really-never-a-possibility-as-a-career zookeeper in England because at that time, these birds were known as jackass penguins, a nod to the sound they sometimes make, which sounds a bit like a donkey, I guess. They are not only the only penguins in Africa, they are the only penguins in the old world. All the other species of penguin are either in South America or Oceania.

African penguins are inherently cute, right? I mean how could you not love these birds that stand upright on two feet with two flippers that look like arms and are just so, so easy to anthropomorphize. Squint and ignore the distance and you could almost believe an African penguin is a miniature person. If there was any doubt about this issue, we found a sign on this trip that identified African penguins as "charismatic megafauna" or simply "adorable".

Know what else African penguins are? Endangered. But not just endangered. Critically endangered. It may seem impossible from the abundance of penguins in this post but it's true. Read on. 

Critically endangered species are species which are categorized as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. At the beginning of the nineteenth century (the year 1800 for those of you challenged by numbered centuries like I am sometimes), there were an estimated four million African penguins on our planet. 

You know what's coming here, right? 

100 years later, those numbers were cut by about 60%. Just 1.5 million at the turn of the twentieth century. By about the year 2000, that number had dropped by about 90% to a total of maybe 150,000 of these birds in the wild. Maybe. That's a population that's spread around the coast of South Africa and Namibia, mostly to be found breeding on islands right off the shore of the continent.

It gets worse. 

Of course it does!

10 years after the turn of our current century, we were down to just a bit more than 50,000 wild African penguins and they were pegged for extinction in the wild by the year 2026. That's next year!!! Based on our visit this year, I feel pretty confident that there will be some African penguins in the wild beyond next year but I don't really know based on what I've seen. Maybe they make it to the middle of the next calendar decade or maybe a bit beyond based on recent prohibitions on fishing in penguin feeding grounds. But it ain't good.

African penguins have a maximum lifespan of about 14 years. In those 14 years, it takes them about four of those years to get to breeding age. That means they have about 10 years maximum (emphasis on maximum) to crank out as many little penguins as possible so the species can survive. How many eggs does a typical penguin couple lay per year? One or two. That's it. Same mate each year. Same nest site each year. Two chicks maximum. 

What could go wrong with those two chicks reaching maturity? Plenty. Let's start with death of one of the two penguin spouses. That doesn't necessarily threaten the chicks after they are hatched but it for sure might delay or just entirely prevent birth. What about the nest location being destroyed / co-opted for some use by man? I'm sure that slows up things too. Then there's the three months of constant feeding required at the beginning of the chicks' lives. Let's hope mom and dad (one has to watch the nest, after all) survive that process. Then, of course, there are predators intentional (gulls and rodents, anyone?) or unintentional (I'm thinking man here...).

So let's say they make it through mom and dad feeding them for a few months, then they are ready to swim and feed for themselves (young African penguins are called blue penguins) and after a couple of years they will molt and get their adult plumage after that and it's ready for kids of their own after that. 

Assuming they make it, that is.

All that growing up and raising traditionally happened off shore, meaning on those islands around the African continent. We visited one island off the coast of South Africa (Robben Island) where we did see some African penguins. But the majority of the penguins we saw on this trip were on the mainland. And here apparently man has once again intervened, not by threatening the penguins on the islands but killing off a lot of the birds' predators closer to shore making it safe to mate and raise a couple of baby penguins on the mainland.

Man is an equal opportunity killer of wildlife, it seems. Like we didn't already know that.

Our destination to see these penguins? A place called Boulders Beach. Apparently four penguins showed up sometime around 1984 and started a very exclusive colony. Since then, it's grown a bit. Today's estimates on the internet (dangerous, I know) look like anywhere between 1,500 to 4,000 birds. Not bad. But not 4 million either.

Call me scarred by past experiences hunting down penguins and flamingos and things like that but I have to tell you, I was expecting very few penguins at Boulders Beach. The fact that they nest there didn't make any difference to me. I expected a struggle to see any penguins at all.

Then we saw the ticket booth. OK, if they are charging admission, there are pretty much going to be some penguins.

What we found beyond the entrance gates were a lot of penguins completely free and not caged within feet of us. And I do mean feet but in some cases, it was really inches. It felt like an exhibit but it actually isn't. Man didn't make these penguins start nesting here. They just decided to do it one day. And they are still there in great numbers regardless of mankind erecting an entry booth and a souvenir store to profit off the birds' presence.

It felt like there were a lot of penguins on the beach and in the water. Not 1,500 to 4,000 but a lot. Hundreds maybe. Certainly not four figures. They were standing, walking, swimming, exiting the water, shaking water off, lying down and just generally not doing anything much except being penguins in the middle of the day in South Africa.

We also saw the whole lifecycle of the African penguin on that beach. From adults to molting chicks-becoming-adults to blue penguins and even chicks. Although I guess not eggs, so maybe not the whole lifecycle. The two chicks we saw were really honestly within arm's-length of the boardwalk for the humans if were had been silly enough to reach into the bushes lining the sides of that raised wooden path. We didn't reach out. 500 Rand fine AND the "Penguins Will Bite" sign was front and center in my mind if I even had a notion to reach out and touch one of those fluffy chicks.

WILL bite, not MIGHT bite. WILL.

A few observations here...

First, if it's action you are looking for at Boulders Beach, the water is where you need to be. There's a whole lot of sitting around on land and a whole lot of zooming around in the surf. African penguins can apparently swim 20 kilometers per hour and can dive to a depth of 200 feet when chasing their fish of choice which is usually sardines. You won't get to see much fishing or diving near the Beach but you will see a lot of fast swimming. I'm pleased we got to see this and take pictures of it from the land. We'd seen little blue penguins in New Zealand from a boat and it's way easier to use a camera to photographs penguins on land than on a boat.

Second, the tell-tale feature of a mature Africa penguin is the pink patch above their eyes. And in an amazing I-can't-believe-nature-works-this-way way, this tiny little pink patch allows the penguins to control their body temperature. If the penguin ever gets too warm, the body sends blood to this pink patch to get cooled off. These machines that are living beings are just incredible. No way would a species designer (I realize there is no such thing) would ever add this feature to a two foot high bird that can't fly and spends a ton of time fishing in the ocean. This nature stuff...crazy!

Finally, if these extinction numbers are in any way accurate and if man cannot find a way to preserve and protect and environment for these creatures to survive long-term, what an incredible privilege it was to spend about an hour or so among and around these birds. I especially appreciated the fact that I found a fellow tourist hunched over peering into the undergrowth at one spot which allowed me to find the two chicks that were sheltered within (a picture of one of the two is below). These young penguins are part of the future for this species, if they can make it to breeding age and don't have their environment destroyed by people. I can only hope today that things don't go that way. This experience was amazingly special despite its brevity.

So that's it for me and penguins. I know we found just one species of penguin in South Africa but penguins are off officially off my list of species that have eluded me for the entirety of the travel with purpose phase of my life. Thank you, South Africa. I can only hope that future generations get the chance I got in November of this year.

Now...about those flamingos. 

Lots of penguins; two penguins; a hidden chick; and the entrance gate.