| Background Information |
Despite the name, King penguins are not the giants of all penguins; those are the Emperor penguins. However, the title of "king" isn't unfitting for the King penguin since it is the second largest penguin in the world, stading 95 cm tall and weighing about 15 kilograms. It is moderately easy to differentiate the Emperor and the Kings; Kings have more orange coloring on their breasts, look trimmer and have longer bills. Males and females are monomorphic.
King penguins can be found in the Periantarctic and Subantarctic islands year round. Despite their scientific name, patagonica, there's no evidence that they ever lived in Patagonia. Over 1.6 million breeding pairs can be found disperesed over the Falkland Islands, Macquarie Islands, Heard Island, Iles Crozet and Marion island. They aren't considered migratory. Their breeding season is unusually long.
At 3.2+ million strong, King penguins are considered stable, but they do have predators. These animals are the usual suspects: leopard seals, skuas and petrels. King penguins feed upon crustaceans, small fish, squid and plankton.
| Author Bernard Stonehouse |
King penguins, Aptenodytes patagonica are similar to Emperors but smaller; they breed, often in large colonies of several thousand birds, on Marion Island, Iles Crozet and Kerguelen, Heard and Macquarie Islands, and the Falkland Islands. Subspecies proposed by earlier workers have not been substantiated, and the species seems to be uniform throughout its broad circumpolar range. Several colonies are known to have been destroyed by hunters. Kings may formerly have bred in the Magellanes region and on Staten Island, and the recent appearance of new colonies on Heard Island and the Falkland Islands represents a recolonisation after extirpation by man. Earlier reports of their breeding on the South Sandwhich Islands, where they were recorded by Eights (1833) in 1829-30, lie far south of their present range, and seem an improbable breeding ground for birds which normally form colonies in the shelter of dense tussock grass. King penguins incubate their single egg on the feet, incubating in summer and rearing their chicks throughout the following winter. Parents which lay early in one season and rear their chick successfully undergo moult and breed later in the second season, but cannot produce more than two chicks in three successive years.
| King penguin multimedia |
- This King reveals what's under his brood patch
- A group of King penguins standing around
- Another group of Kings standing about (note transmitter)
- Colonies of King penguins can be quite large
- Here's another shot of a King colony
- This picture is of a King penguin in ecstatic display
- A parent feeds its chick
- A small cluster of juveniles
- Every King penguin goes through a moult
- Sometimes seals get in the way
- King penguins have to watch out for sea lions
King penguins sitting on eggs and bickering. (© PBS)
A King penguin demonstrating his prowess.
King penguin fact sheet. (PDF, 111k)
