From Victor Steinbok, three recent penguin stories from the UK paper The Independent on-line: 2/18, 2/23, 3/7 (interestingly, by three different reporters in three different sections of the paper; still, it looks like the paper is into penguins).
2/18, in News/People, by Caroline Mortimer, “Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill quizzes penguin during trip to Antarctica: Religious leader befriends the bird after it comes up to greet him on a beach”, beginning:
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has quizzed a penguin he met on a trip to Antarctica.
Patriarch Kirill was visiting Russia’s Bellinghausen Station on King George’s Island when he encountered the bird which came up to him during a trip to a beach.
Asking him “What, little one? What’s troubling you?”, the Patriarch knelt to greet the bold animal which seemed to confront him, holding out its wings and sticking out its neck.
(#1)
2/23, in Environment/Nature, by Henry Tustin, “News of their deaths prompted outcry worldwide, but the 150,000 Adelie penguins that were thought to have perished after they were landlocked by an enormous iceberg could still be alive, a scientist has claimed”, beginning:
News of their deaths prompted outcry worldwide, but the 150,000 Adelie penguins that were thought to have perished after they were landlocked by an enormous iceberg could still be alive, a scientist has claimed.
Their colony shrank drastically after the B09B iceberg – approximately the size of Rome – floated in to their habitat close to Cape Denison, a rocky point at the head of Antarctica’s, Commonweath Bay.
Researchers from Australia’s University of New South Wales suggested they had died in a paper, after witnessing the population drop from 160,000 to just 10,000 last year.
Reporting that they had seen dead penguins in the region, they predicted the colony would be extinct in just 20-years.
But now Michelle De La Rue, a penguin population researcher at the University of Minnesota in the US, said the birds could simply have waddled off to join other penguins closer to the water.
“Just because there are a lot fewer birds observed doesn’t automatically mean the ones that were there before have perished,” said Ms LaRue, who did not take part in the study with the Australian team.
(#2)
A colony of Adelies, looking like they’re posing for the photo
3/7, in News/World/Americas, by Janet Tappin Coelho in Rio de Janeiro, “Meet Dindim, the penguin who returns to his human soulmate every year: Seabird makes annual trek to his rescuer on Brazilian island”, beginning:
Four years ago, Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, found a South American Magellanic penguin covered in oil and starving on a beach on an island off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. A friendship was born.
Since they met in 2011, the creature, which normally breeds on the Patagonia coasts of Argentina and Chile, three to five thousand miles away, has become a faithful companion, swimming every year from its habitat to spend up to eight months living with the retired fisherman in his house on the island.
The speculation is that Dindim thinks the fisherman is a penguin.
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