Humboldt #penguin chicks at Oregon Zoo looking like "velvety gray plush toys" (video, photos)

By Benjamin Brink | The Oregonian/OregonLive
March 31, 2015

Michael Durham, Oregon Zoo Photographer/Videographer, photographed the new Humboldt penguin chicks as they got a quick check up. All photos by Michael Durham/Zoo Photographer/Videographer

When you only weight 67 grams at birth it's a big deal to gain 50 grams a day. There are 28 grams in an ounce and the new Humboldt penguin chicks at the Oregon Zoo are rapidly working their way up to weighing a pound.

Gwen Harris, senior bird keeper at the zoo, checked the weight and general health of the three chicks today and said everything is going fine. Harris said they are living on a diet of crop milk, which isn't really milk at all. It's regurgitated "fish smoothie" from mom and dad.

It's going to be a while before the public will see the new chicks. They don't fledge, leave the nest, for about three months. So around June they will be out for everyone to see.

The young penguins' genders won't be known until their first full veterinary checkup takes place in about three months. The checkup today was very quick as they don't want to keep them out of the nest box for long.

 

Michael Durham, the Oregon Zoo Photographer/Videographer, got in to see the new Humboldt penguin chicks this morning as they had a quick checkup.

"The chicks look like velvety gray plush toys," said curator Michael Illig, who oversees the zoo's birds and species recovery programs. "They weigh just a few ounces and can fit in the palm of your hand."

By summer, the chicks will be nearly as tall as the adult Humboldts, but easy to tell apart by their plumage: They will be grayish-brown all over and won't develop the distinctive black-and-white tuxedo markings for a couple more years.

Young penguins can swim right away once they fledge -- no lessons needed -- and visitors should have good views of these sleek sea birds darting through the clear waters of the zoo's penguinarium.
Humboldt penguins, which live along the South American coastline off of Peru and Chile, are classified as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and in 2010 were granted protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Of the world's 17 penguin species, Humboldts are among the most at risk, threatened by overfishing of their prey species, entanglement in fishing nets, and breeding disruption due to commercial removal of the guano deposits where the penguins lay their eggs. Their population is estimated at 12,000 breeding pairs.

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