By Julie

Our final feathery friend is known as the Rockhopper penguin. Hopping peacefully from rock to rock like they’re rubber balls, early visitors to the Falkland Islands (where these penguins live) called them “Jumping Jacks”! The islands where rockhopper penguins live have the greatest temperature range of any penguin habitat. That means it can be chilly, and you’ll be sweating in a while! Rockhoppers, like all penguins, have snow-white bellies and chests and black backs. This is to camoflauge them from their predators and prey when they’re swimming. From above, their dark backs blend in with the dark waters below. From below, their light bellies blend with the light sky above. They also have spines along their tongues for a reason, to keep food going one way: in! Rockhoppers are the smallest of the crested penguins, sporting firey yellow plumes. In mating season, these penguins shake their head rapidly to create a flurry of crest, almost like a halo! This helps them attract a mate. Chicks gather in créches, or small nursery groups. Rockhoppers also have a very ecstatic vocalization, or a very loud call or cry. Rockhoppers are known for their ability to hop! Rather like a kangaroo, they hop instead of walking. They can scale slopes close to 500 feet in an hour, using about six-inch hops. They take breaks if the slope gets too steep. These determined Jumping Jacks are sure to hop to the top of your favorite animals list!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project

Here comes another kind of penguin fit for a king: the Royal penguin! Unlike the Emperor and King, they stroll down the red carpets of Macquarie island. This island is halfway between Australia and Antarctica. It is also the sole place that royal penguins live! Most penguins inhabit a few islands, but the royal penguin sticks to Macquarie. They nest in depressions in the ground lined with pebbles or grass. They also pack together in mammoth colonies: ranging from 75 to 500,000 pairs! There were 56 royal penguin colonies counted on Macquarie in 1984. There are 850,000 pairs of royal penguins in total, and they are considered to be a stable species. They are white and black with yellow and black crests. Royals are one of the biggest crested penguins.They also have thick orange bills. They are about as tall as a medium-sized bush, two feet. They weigh 10 to 15 pounds, which is a few pounds heavier than a newborn baby. They look a lot like Macaroni penguins, except for their white chins. It’s understandable that they were once thought to be a Macaroni subspecies, their living spaces even overlap! The shape of a royal penguin’s body helps it to swim at speeds of 20 miles per hour! This probably explains why they spend lots of time at sea. Their speed helps them catch crustaceans, fish, and squid for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Their diet is about half krill and other small crustaceans. 48% is fish, and about 2% squid. Little penguins huddle into a créche for warmth and safety. These kingly and queenly penguins may not live in a palace, but they sure do rule the penguins!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

The penguin I will tell you about next is the Snares Island, or Snares Crested penguin. Splishing and splashing, braying and bickering, you probably want to go watch up close! Sorry, but Snares Island penguins live on Snares Island, New Zealand. This island is a marine sanctuary, and humans are prohibited. You can catch views of these penguins from boats, though. Snares Island is completely free of introduced land animals! These animals are big threats to many kinds of penguins, so this gives Snares Island penguins a better place to live! Luckily, Snares Island penguins don’t migrate from this wonderful home. These penguins come together in huge rookeries! The rookeries can hold millions of these penguins in just one crowded rookery! They make their nests on forested beaches or high rocky hills. They scrape out a little nest and line it with twigs and branches. When their egg hatches, it stays in a créche with other chicks, waiting for its parents to bring it some fish, squid, and krill. When they grow a little bit older, they hang around and sometimes get in the way at the rookery. These penguins are called “hoodlums”. Snares Island penguins are black and white, like all penguins. They have a thick, heavy orange bill. They also have red eyes. They have bright yellow crests on their heads. They are difficult to tell from other crested penguins, especially while they’re swimming. Unfortunately, these penguins are considered “very vulnerable” because of their low numbers and limited breeding areas. There are only 25,000 pairs! No matter how rare, these Snares Crested penguins are sure to win your heart.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

About our next penguin: when people here the words “macaroni penguin”, they’re likely to think either “You’re kidding!” or “I’m hungry!” These delicious critters even live on South Sandwich Island! These penguins are actually named for hats called “macaroni” hats. They had feathers in them, like the macaroni penguin crests, and were worn by 18th century men called “macaronis”. This is also where the song “Yankee Doodle” came from! Macaroni penguins are the largest crested penguin. They get their orangey-yellow crests as adults. Crests are like little tufts of yellow and orange feathers sticking out of the sides of some types of penguins’ heads. Macaronis look a bit like Royal penguins, but Royals have white chins. Macaronis have white bellies, and backs and heads as black as coal-colored licorice. Macaronis and social, and spend lots of time together. Little baby penguins huddle into crèches, like many other kinds of penguins. Crèches are little little groups or huddles. Lovelace, from the movie Happy Feet, is most likely a macaroni. But these penguins don’t live in the snow with adélies, they live on islands like South Sandwich and South Georgia Island. These penguins breed the furthest south of the crested group, and don’t migrate. There are nearly 12 million pairs of these birds, making them the most abundant penguins on Earth! Macaronis sometimes forge and indulge their meals of fish and squid after dark. To troop around, macaronis hop on both feet. You’ll find these distinguished macaroni penguins to add a formal touch to the world of penguin curiosity.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project

You’ll find the fairy penguin, or little blue penguin, making a splash in the sub-Antarctic regions south of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Living up to their name, these compact penguins are only 16 to 17 inches tall and weigh but two pounds! They are the smallest penguins. Fairy penguins have indigo-blue and slate-gray backs, heads, and flippers. Their bellies and chests are white. They have tiny heads with two pinprick earholes and bigger bodies. Their torpedolike shape helps them swim through the water rapidly. These penguins are excelent swimmers. Their scientific name, Eudyptula, means ‘good little diver’ in Greek! They spend most of the day at sea snagging small fish, miniature squid and octopi, and tiny crustaceans. They forage for food in groups called “rafts”. They return to their nests, burrows or rock crevices lined with plant material, at the end of the day. Did you know that fairy penguins reuse the same nest every year? They usually live for about seven years. They have a population of 500,000 pairs, or 1,000,000 birds! My last interesting fact about these penguins is their wide sound range: they can bark, bleat, bray, cackle, growl, hiss, quack, scream, sneeze, trumpet, and even moo and meow! As you can clearly see, these itsy-bitsy penguins are definently small but mighty!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

A loud, braying call pierces the air. Å donkey? It could be a jackass penguin! Jackass penguins are penguins of many names. Some call them blackfoot penguins, because of their webbed feet with dark hues. Another name is the jackass penguin, because of their cry similar to a donkey or jackass. Their last name is the African penguin, because they live on islands off the coast of southern Africa. They nest in burrows dug under rocks or the small amount of vegetation. They’re known to munch on tiny fish like sardines, suncord, and anchovies. They also like squid and crustaceans. They can eat a pound of food each day! Blackfoot penguins are of average penguin size, about two feet tall. That is tall enough to peer over the end of the average piano bench. They have light bellies and black backs, flippers, and heads. A white stripe surrounds their cheeks. Pink featherless patches lay above their eyes. A horseshoe-shaped band crosses their chests. They also have black spots on their chests that are unique to every penguin like human fingerprints! African penguins have a population on about 180,000 birds, one of the smallest penguin species! They are recognized as “vulnerable” because of oil spills and habitat loss. Possibly due to this, jackass penguins are some of the least-studied penguin species. Watching this sparse species of penguins dive in and out of the waves searching for a meal would be nothing less than a great pleasure.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

Our next penguins, the Yellow-eyed Penguins, live up to their name. Their eyes of pale yellow, gleaming like bright topaz gems, will grab your interest right away. These intruiging penguins are the rarest out of all of them! Their population is 1,500 to 2,000 pairs, which is very few next to the macaroni, which probably has around 2,000,000 pairs! They live on the coast of New Zealand and a few more southern islands. They nest in forests! They can be seen residing in little nests resembling shallow bowls, lined with twigs and grasses, like a sparrow or some other flying bird’s nest. However, the yellow-eyed penguins’ nests are on the forest floor where they can reach. These penguins need a lot of personal space: most of the time, nests are spaced out widely to one nest per hectare! This proves that the penguins seek solitude: they are the least socialable of all the penguins and seem to enjoy being out of sight of others except their mates and chicks. Even the little chicks don’t huddle off in créches, or nursery groups, like most penguin types. They like to stick with their parents. If you watch, some people see yellow-eyed penguins scuttle down to the sea to catch food at dawn or dusk! Their diet is 85% fish and 15% squid. They much catch a lot to eat, since they’re such swift swimmers! Another amazing fact about these penguins is that they can live to 20 years old! Yellow-eyed penguins are probably the closest penguins to the “original penguin” in appearance. They have grey-blue backs and white bellies. Their bills are red-purple. They are the third largest penguin, after the emperor and king. They get their name from their stunning yellow eyes. A crown of yellow feathers circles their eyes and wraps around the back of their head. However amazing these penguins are, they are classified as threatened or endangered. Their forests are sometimes chopped down, forcing these brilliant birds to nest in high grasses. Mammals, like dogs, cats, and ferrets that people have brought to the country can harm or eat them there! A Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust was formed to help save these penguins. Every school in New Zealand got educational resource kits, and with everyone pitching in, the lives of yellow-eyed penguins began to improve. It fills me with joy that if people try hard enough, they can save species! If you can’t believe all of these interesting facts about yellow-eyed penguins, go to New Zealand and spot these birds with their beautiful yellow eyes for yourself!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

Even though you’ve heard mostly about penguins like the adélie, emperor, and king, it’s not really realistic- most penguins live where it’s warmer or are even beach bums! A good phrase to describe the Galapagos penguin is “soaking up some sun rays”! These penguins live off the coast of Ecuador on the Galapagos Islands, on the Pacific Ocean. The air temperature can get over 100 degrees F, water temperature to 82 degrees F, and the dark feathers on their backs to 124 degrees F! This is 100 degrees (or more) warmer than the frosty Antarctic! Appropriately, Galapagos penguins nest in burrows, underneath plants, and in lava rock crevices. How do these penguins beat the heat, being the penguins living in the hottest climate?! The chilly Cromwell Current offers a refreshing dip, and the penguins spend a whole lot of time making a splash there. You might notice them panting like dogs that just ran like crazy. Humans sweat, but penguins lack sweat glands and lose body heat by panting. They hold their flippers slightly outward to lose more body heat and to keep their feet from getting sunburned! Even so, this type of penguin is officially endangered. There are only 15,000 birds left! This sad truth makes me want to hop a ship to the Galapagos and do something to help! Galapagos penguins are one of the smaller species, the smallest banded penguin. They have white stomachs and blue-black backs and heads. A blue-black band runs across their chests. Their bills are long and thin, like two burnt french fries stuck on top of one another! They are sometimes confused with their look-alike, the Magellanic, but Galapagos penguins are smaller and have thinner belly marks. So don’t take it for granted if you have air-contitioning and fans to keep you cool!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

The third Antarctic bird braving the cold down at the bottom of the world is another regal penguin: the King. King penguins are unique, skilled, and even wacky! King penguins don’t exactly live in Antarctic. They’re sub-Antarctic, they live around North Antarctica. They’re not the most abundant species of penguin, but they live in humungous colonies of up to 20,000 birds! Kings are a lot like Emperor penguins- they even look almost identical to them, but kings are just a bit smaller and more brightly colored. They have pupils the size of pinheads in the light, but they grow tremendous in the dark. This lets them catch up to 2,000 fish in the dim waters of the sea! It does sort of help that some fish glow in the dark, though. The king penguin babies are a little strange- they don’t look like their parents or even penguins at all! They are almost as large as their penguin parents, plump, fuzzy with no sleek feathers, and brown all over! They look so different that people used to think that they were another species, dubbing them “woolly penguins”! The king penguins eat squid and fish, but the dads can go for a month without food while their mates are at sea! But the babies are even tougher, able to fast for five months at once and lose 68% of their body weight! Parents are able to pick out the voice of their child from hundreds of chicks in a penguin créche, or huddle. When the chicks are in their eggs, adults keep them in their warm brood patches on their feet, the only penguins to not have nests. Parents take turns balancing the egg. Another interesting fact is that most penguins use a little hop to move around, but kings prefer running with their feet. To be able to observe these creatures at work and play would be more amazing than a trip to Hawaii for me.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was part of a school project.

Equally important to the Adélie penguin, the other Antarctic species is the exceptionally elegant Emperor penguin. Every winder’s end on this frozen continent, there comes a miraculous, exciting sound, full of wonder. Peck, peck! Peck, peck! The sound of hatching chicks! Why is this so miraculous, exciting, and wonderful? These emperor penguins are the only Antarctic bird to breed in the coldest season- winter! When baby eggs are struggling to thrive, temperatures can drop as low as -80 degrees, 80 degrees lower temperature than a freezer, and winds can get as raging as 125 MPH! How do even adults survive this cold, you wonder? Imagine wearing a thick, thick coat with even 70 feathers per square inch on it. That’s what the amazingly insulated Emperor feels like! Babies, after born, huddle together in créches, little “playgroups” to keep them warm. They also stay in their parents’ brood patch- a warm area under their stomachs- even after they hatch, until they can regulate their own body temperature. Another interesting fact about their way of life is that they can dive 1,752 feet underwater and hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time!!!!! In fact, these penguins are clearly record-breakers. The biggest penguins, they can get up to four feet tall, which is so tall they could walk on the bottom of almost half of the big pool at an average recreation center without a problem! Emperors have black beaks and white bellies with a tinge of orange around their chests. Wait- one more record coming up! Emperors are the only penguins that may never touch land in a lifetime other than ice floes floating in the water! No wonder they’re good swimmers! These penguins are literally the “Amazing Atheletes of Antarctica”. Imagine how amazing it would be to rule Antarctica like a real monarch as one of these awesome emperors.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.