The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1907-05-06
THE EMPEROR PENGUIN.
Queer Ways of This Great Polar Bird
and Its Young.


and Its Young.
"Not many birds undertake to lay
their eggs in the darkness Of polar
winter, nor do many birds appear to
think that sea ice is the most attrac-
tive ground to sit on.
when in addition TO this writes
Edmund A. Wilson in 1.-The Voyage of
the Discovery 1--WE find the emperor
penguin Matching out its chicks in the
coolest month of the whole antarctic
year. when the mean temperature for
the month is IS degrees below zero, F.,
and the minimum may fall to-6S de-
grees, 1 think We may rightly consider
the bird to be eccentric.
1.-The emperor penguin stands nearly
four feet high and weighs upward of
eighty to ninety pounds. He is an ex-
ceedingly handsome bird. with rich
black head, a blush gray back and
wings. a lemon yellow breast, with a
satinlike gloss on the feathers and a
brilliant patch of orange on the neck
and lower bill.
His movements are slow and state
ly, and the dignity of his appearance
is much increased by the upright car
riage of his head and bill.
His voice Is loud and trumpet-like
and rings out in the pack ice with a
note of defiance that makes one feel
man is the real intruder. Penguins
have no fear, but an abundance OF in
quisitiveness, and will walk up to a
human being and stand in a ring
around him, with an occasional remark
from one to the other, discussing no
doubt the nature of this new and up
right neighbor.
THE method employed by the en-
peror penguin for carrying the egg
and chick upon his feet is shared also
by the king penguin of the subant-
arctic area, as we saw in our visit to
their rookeries in the Macquarie IS
lands.
1.-THE king penguin we saw as he sat
in mud and puddles. with his single
egg upon his feet, and now we saw
the emperor penguin doing precisely
the same thing with his single chicken
to keep it off the ice, and we are
agreed that the term pouch, which has
been used in this connection, is one
which not only does not describe the
matter but is anatomically wrong and
misleading.
THE single egg. or the chick, sits
resting on the dorsum of the foot,
wedged in between the legs and the
lower abdomen, and over it falls a folc
of heavily feathered skin, which is
very loose. and can completely cover
up and hide the egg or chick from
view. When the chick is hungry or
inquisitive, it pokes out from under
the material Tor paternaD lappet a
piebald downy head of black and
white. emitting its shrill and persist
ent pipe until the mother Tor the IA
therl fills it up.
THE feeding is managed as with
cormorants and many other birds. the
little one finding regurgitated food
when It TRUSTS its head inside the
parents mouth.
IT think the chickens hate their par
ents. and when one watches the pro-
ceedings in rookery it strikes one as
not surprising. In the first place.
there is about one chick to ten or
twelve adults. and each adult has an
overpowering desire to sit on some
thing. Both males and females want
to nurse. and the result is that when
a chicken finds himself alone there is
rush on the part of dozen unem-
ployed to seize him
Naturally he runs away and lodges
here and there till six stone emperor
falls on him. and then begins a regular
football scrimmage, in which each tries
TO hustle the other off, and the end Is
too often disastrous to the chick.
Sometimes he falls into crack in
the ice and stays there to be frozen
while the parents sauabble at the top.
Sometimes, rather than be nursed, l
have seen him crawl in under an ice
ledge and remain there. where the old
ones cannot reach him. I think it is
not an exaggeration TO say that of the
- per cent that die no less than half
are killed hv Kindness"