Locomotoring

This is my first friendly chinstrap. I have decided to call him Doreo, derived from a dark oreo. Perhaps he fancies himself as a Mateo, but what he doesn’t know, won’t hurt him. He was curious and came within a few feet. I am assuming Doreo was a he because the colony here had chicks and the mums were all fussing over their chicks. This lot are distinctive with that strap under their proud chins. I wonder what he thought of me, swaddled in an orange parka, looking like a larger and less elegant version of himself. 

The chinstraps are a talkative lot. I found myself waiting for over an hour for the humans to stop talking, so I could record the penguins. In the end, I had to cobble together from over 20 separate recordings to eliminate the human noises. While waiting, I got the opportunity to watch them closely. They groom. They squawk. They do some ballistic pooping, including the chicks. Later I learnt that they have specialized physiology that allows them to poop several feet away from their nests (link). They seem to ponder a lot. Later I learnt that they can micronap 10000 times a day (link). I had thought more stones more better, progeny survival being correlated with size of their stone nests. What I saw was preference for specific stones. Either they were just killing time, or like me, they did like the looks of one stone over other. I saw a lot of pink poop. Later I learned that their poop, called guano, colored pink due to a krill diet, is visible from space (link). I learned more about unregulated krill fishery (link) and took the vow again to never eat farmed fish (hello, plant based diet, I come to you in this new year!).