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Magellanic Penguin

Magellanic Penguins are named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted the birds in 1520. They undertake the longest migration of any flightless bird in the world, going north of the Antarctic sometimes as far as the waters north of Rio de Janiero. We saw a small colony in the Falkland Islands, including this one. They are the penguins whom people tend to see first on trips such as the one I took, because they are in the Beagle Channel near Ushuaia and in the Drake Passage just beyond that. The Beagle Channel was named after Darwin’s ship. Magellanic Penguins have bare pink skin around the eye and at the base of the bill. Among the flocks we saw swimming near our ship on our way back to Ushuaia was a leucistic one who looked tan rather than black.

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Uploaded on December 30, 2018
Taken on January 12, 2016