Happy Spring Day!

For those of you in the northern hemisphere , September means that you're heading into autumn, but in South Africa, 1 September is always seen as the first day of spring. It is getting warmer and the summer migrants will soon start arriving. And for the penguins, many of them will be finished breeding and the young chicks will be heading out to sea for the first time...

 

Now is the time when young penguins like this one, will start to think about leaving the colony to go to sea for the first time.

African Penguins aren't like other species which live in colder environments and do everything synchronously. One can predict almost to the day when Adelie Penguins will return to their colonies to breed. But an African Penguin colony is never really empty. At the same time in the same colony penguins could be incubating eggs, rearing chicks or moulting their feathers right next to each other! But at this time of year, most of them have finished breeding and are going out to sea to forage before coming back to moult (where they replace all their feathers at once and can't go to sea for 2 weeks as the new feathers aren't waterproof).

 

A resigned looking penguin in moult

Help us to make this spring a more hopeful one for the penguins. We have just 3 days to raise the remaining 34% of the funds!