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Penguins
Beloved sons,
It is the Leap Year construction, the peculiar day that comes every
four years to rescue the calendar, and I am aboard the Mare Australis.
I have spent one night here. We have ridden the zodiac boats and wandered
across a small island called Magdalena Island, home to Magellanic penguins.
We are navigating in the Straits of Magellan, and hence there are many
“Magellanic” varieties of birds and mammals, but only the
penguins, some cormorants (black and white, not like Florida cormorants),
geese and skuas (large brown birds that attack the penguin and cormorant
chicks) occupy Magdalena Island.  Magellanic-Magdalena—it
took me a while. We pulled close to a low lump of an island, with some
cliffs on the west side, barren with the greenish hue of scrub to the
naked eye except for a lighthouse. With binoculars we could see the
birds and penguins everywhere.
We were told to get ready to disembark which meant that we were to don
our rain gear and life vests. Mostly people used the yellow rain gear
provided in every cabin. We lined up in our large yellow rain suits
overslung with the bright orange life vests, getting ready to climb
into the zodiaks which kept pulling up to stairs at the back of the
ship. We filed down the narrow open stairs from the top deck. On the
way past a bulletin board we moved a red tag with our room number (the
way the ship’s officers made sure everyone had boarded again,
as we would move the tag back on our way in) and climbed, about 12 people
at a time, into the zodiaks.  We
had been instructed how to act with the penguins, how to retreat if
they were acting frightened. We couldn’t simply scour the island
but had to stay on one human-smelling, adulterated course up about a
mile to the lighthouse and back. I couldn’t help it, but I kept
thinking what in the world were the penguins thinking as this species
of giant yellow, orange-breasted penguin invaded their island.
Boys, I wish you both were here with me. Such experiences should not
wait until the end of a life. They should flood into the beginning,
so that heads get screwed on straight.
Magdalena Island is a nesting area. Mostly there are hundreds of thousands
of penguins. The birds mate for life. They come here in November and
return to the very same hole they left in the spring in order to have
a new round of babies. When they lay their eggs, if one egg is too small,
they throw it out of the nest, but after this initial separation, they
carefully treat each of their chicks the same.  They
don’t favor the strongest one. The young birds don’t have
the proper feathers for swimming until they are older, until March or
April, and the breathless parents must bring them food from the sea
and protect them from the skuas. Mostly the little penguins hide or
waddle very near their holes.
In the spring the adults and young birds start north. But only for a
little bit. The mother and father have gotten their chicks ready, but
now they have to get themselves ready. They have to return to Magdalena
Island to molt. This takes another six weeks. Meanwhile by instinct,
but also led by “nurse” penguins, the huge groups of young
penguins flock northwards, one group up the East Coast of South America
to Brazil, the other up the West Coast to Peru.  Who
are the “nurse” penguins? These birds have lost their mates.
Now their role in life is to be extra parents to the young birds. They
know what to do and are totally necessary to the survival of the group.
Then another year passes and the flocks come from the West and the East
back into the Straits of Magellan, back to Magdalena Island, back to
the same little holes in the ground.
When we come on shore the penguins stand very quietly and stare at us.
(A great deal of time the penguins seem to be standing around on beaches
and, apparently, preening. But they are not preening. They have little
sacks of oil somewhere near their bottoms, and before they go swimming
and fishing in the cold waters, they have to dip into this little sack
with their beaks and cover all their feathers with the protective oil.
It takes them at least an hour every time they go in. Since they have
to go in frequently to feed their chicks, life is consumed in this way.)
 Anyway they stop whatever
they are doing as we approach. They are incredibly quiet and observant.
Great flocks of us approach and are staring at them and clicking our
pictures, and they are staring right back. You tell me who has their
head on right, who is bird-brained and who is not. What did these creatures
ever do to despoil this magnificent sphere in a trackless universe?
The ship is quite wonderful, beautifully appointed. My room is large
and airy with a huge window. The wide and comfortable beds have blue
padded covers printed with white sailing ships. The mahogany closets,
doors and cabinets fit with special catches so that nothing bangs if
the ship starts to pitch. When all of us come back from Magdalena Island,
the tags are checked. With a shipboard crane seamen sling the four zodiaks
on to racks over the third deck. The procedure is fast and efficient.
Anytime we passengers may visit the bridge where officers display the
sonar, radar, and GPS guiding us through the treacherous waters.
Still, I ask you, what have we done? And who knows where we are going?
And who is bird-brained and who is not?
Mom
Roberta Jackson Farr ‘61
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