Bird of the Week – Chinstrap Penguin

There are birds whose appearance is so distinctive that you automatically understand how they got their name. That would include the Chinstrap Penguin. Chinstraps breed on a swatch of stormy islands from South Georgia to the South Shetlands. Among the breeding sites is a series of colonies on Deception Island, a huge, drowned volcanic caldera, breached on one side by the Southern Ocean. You can see the cinders underfoot in this photo, taken on the shore of Deception Island. There are an estimated 16 million Chinstraps. So long as humankind leaves the krill alone, the species should do well. Unhappily,…