I wonder why they’re called that? Well, I guess it’s kind of obvious from the photo above. They have a dark line around the area where their chins should be.
This is why they are also called Ringed Penguins and Bearded Penguins for the same reason. But Stonecracker Penguins?
That is another name that was given to them, but not because they actually crack stones, but rather because it was felt that their screeching is so piercing that it could crack stones.
They live on Antarctic islands and on the Antarctic Peninsula and even sometimes on icebergs but can also be found as far north as Argentina and Chile. There is even a small breeding population on the Balleny Islands, south of New Zealand.
Breeding
Chinstrap Penguins are generally monogamous, returning to the same mate every year. Each year they return to land to form their colonies, which can sometimes comprise over 100,000 adult pairs.
The males will get to the colony site around 5 days prior to the females arriving. This gives them time to find the shallow depression in the rock that the couple used the year before as a nesting site or at least somewhere nearby.
They will prepare it by adding small stones, sometimes bones as well, to rebuild the nest (how they find the same nest, or even the nearby vicinity a year later, distinguishing it from every other depression in the rock, baffles me!)
They make the nest from these stones to to a height of 15cm to stop melt-water from affecting the egg or young chick. The stones, being scarce, are a constant source of squabbling and theft as they regularly steal them from each other.
The female lays two eggs and each parent takes a shift of around 6 days each looking after the eggs. Once the chick hatch the parents take turns getting food.
The chicks will stay in the nest until they are 20 to 30 days old. After this they join groups of young penguins who huddle together for warmth and protection. This is known as a crèche.
Diet
Chinstraps are up to 70cm high, about 5 kg in weight and eat mainly krill, but also other shrimp, fish and squid, travelling 20-30 km, occasionally up to 80km, to feed every day.
Their main predators are the usual suspects – Leopard seals and killer whales- which attack the adults, and Skuas (an Antarctic bird) which eat their eggs and young chicks.
There are around 8 million breeding pairs so currently the Chinstrap penguin is not endangered.