On Saturday 27 October 2018, 13 African penguins were released into the wild at the third Penguin Palooza at Stony Point Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay.
Despite being an endangered species, according to a tweet from Cape Nature, ‘Stony Point penguin colony currently supports more pairs of penguins [1,774 breeding pairs] than Dassen, Dyer and Robben islands combined’.
Three adult penguins and 10 blues (juvenile penguins) were released in this joint initiative between the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) and CapeNature. According to a press statement, the three adults are rehabilitated birds that had suffered from ‘an eye injury, a deep laceration to the flipper and a throat laceration’, while the 10 young penguins had all been abandoned as chicks.
The juvenile birds waddled out into their natural habitat for the very first time on Saturday as none of them had experienced the wild since being rescued from their nests. Nine of the 13 penguins headed into the sea almost immediately, while the last four were hesitant and needed some encouragement, as you’ll see in the video below.
Also see: 10 pics of African penguins ahead of the Penguin Palooza
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