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| A group of Adelie Penguin |
They have a black head and back and a white coloured front. They have a distinctive white ring around their eyes and their beak is reddish in colour with a black tip.
Adelie Penguins are found in the Antarctic and the surrounding islands. They come ashore to breed in large colonies but they spend the winter months at sea.
Adelie Penguins mainly feed on krill, but they will also eat fish. They mainly make shallow foraging dives of 20 m (66 ft) but they can dive to depths in the region of 175 m (578 ft).
Adelie Penguins come ashore during September and October to breed. They nest in colonies containing thousands of birds and there is fierce competition for nesting sites. A breeding pair will construct a nest by scraping the ground and lining it with pebbles, often stealing pebbles from a neighbours nest.
The female will lay two greenish/white eggs in early November and both parents will share incubation duties. After approximately 35 days the chicks hatch and even though the eggs hatch close together, one chick is usually stronger than the other. Both parents closely care for and feed the chicks for two to three weeks but if food is scarce the smaller chick will rarely survive.
The chicks grow rapidly and after 3 - 4 weeks they join creches with other chicks to enable both parents to go to sea to feed and catch food for them. By March the chicks can swim and are ready to go to sea.
The population of Adelie Penguins stands at approximately 2.5 million pairs.
Adelie Penguins were named after the wife of the French explorer Admiral Durmont d'Urville.
Apart from the storm petrel, Adelie Penguins are the most southerly distributed of all sea birds.
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| Stiff-tailed Penguin |
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| Adelie Penguin |
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| Adelie Penguin at Cape Adare |
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| Comapnion- Adelie Penguin |
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