I’m just back from a superb two days birding in Cape Town, South Africa (just two days? For those who don’t know I work for an airline - I come, I go, what can I say…) with Brian Vanderwalt. It’s going to take me the best part of next week to work through all the photos I took and to write a couple of trip reports, but in the meantime I really wanted to share the following pictures. They were taken at the small African Penguin Spheniscus demersus colony at Betty’s Bay (a former whaling station on the eastern side of False Bay on the southern Cape coast) and show a mother penguin grooming the feathers of a partly-downy and evidently relaxed youngster who seems to love the attention. I don’t usually go in for all this “sweet” stuff, but after the great response to Corey’s Cutest Baby Racoon Ever post, I figure there’s an appetite amongst our readers for pictures that make you go “Aaahh” (Am I right? Leave a comment and let me know eh…)

Stony Point at Betty’s Bay

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a more serious note:

The only Penguin species breeding in Africa the world range of the endemic African or Jackass Penguin extends from just Hollamsbird Island, off central Namibia, to Bird Island in Algoa Bay (17 islands and three mainland sites). Its distribution coincides roughly with the cold, nutrient rich, Benguela Current, but is further determined by the availability of offshore islands as breeding sites.

Most of the world’s 17 Penguin species are in rapid decline, and less than 10% of historical African Penguin populations remain. In 1900, it was estimated that about 1.5 million birds lived on Dassen Island alone. By 1956 the population had fallen to roughly half that and had halved again by the late 1970s, when there was an estimated 220,000 adult birds. By the late 1980s the number had dropped to about 194,000 and in the early 1990s there was just an estimated 179,000 adult birds left.

There are now only about 56,000 breeding pairs of African Penguins world-wide and they are listed as “Vulnerable” in the 2000 IUCN Red List. The reasons for the significant decline in the African Penguin populations are well known. Initially, the decline was due mostly to the exploitation of Penguin eggs, and habitat alteration and disturbance associated with guano collection at breeding colonies. These factors have now largely ceased, and the major current threats include competition with the commercial fisheries - which have removed much of the penguins’ food - and oil pollution. Other threats include competition with Cape fur seals for space at breeding colonies and for food resources, as well as predation by seals. Feral cats are present on some of the islands and pose a problem at a few of the colonies. African Penguins also face predation of eggs and chicks by avian predators such as Kelp Gulls and Sacred Ibises, while natural terrestrial predators, such as mongoose, genets and leopard are present at the mainland colonies.
(Adapted from the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) website)