@guardian: “Quite a surprise” A king penguin has been filmed on a South Australia coastline, raising questions about why the bird is thousands of kilometres away from its usual sub-Antarctic habitat. Jeff Campbell, the chair of Friends of Shorebirds South East, was part of a group of eight people doing a bird survey along the Coorong beach when they spotted the penguin. “It came right up to us ... It put its head back and made a braying call, quite loud, then bowed to us,” he said. The bird, usually found on subantarctic islands, believed to be undergoing annual moulting on land at Coorong beach. They are close relatives of the larger emperor penguins, but prefer the subantarctic islands to the Antarctic ice shelf. Dr Julie McInnes, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Ecology and Biodiversity, says that the Australian mainland was the furthest these penguins could go - and that while global heating was causing changes in penguins’ distribution, that would probably cause them to seek cooler water. It could also just be that the penguin got off track looking for land – usually they would moult on their colony’s island. #Penguin #KingPenguin #Australia

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Friday 02 February 2024 16:13:41 GMT