In this case there was a happy ending: wild penguins are tougher than their zoo-bound cousins and the chicks were nearly full grown, making the colony more than a match for the bird.Petrels, though, are as nothing compared with the human threat from oil spills. Today, penguins enjoy protection from other excesses: in the 1980s, a landmark conservation ruling refused a Japanese company a licence to harvest 40,000 penguins a year from Punta Tombo for food, gloves and oil. About 110 miles north of Punta Tombo lies Peninsula Vald? one of the great marine wildlife havens on earth. Here, briefly diverted from penguins, we spotted the world's largest seal, the southern elephant seal, along with orcas, sealions and whales The setting was even more idyllic than Punta Tombo. Vald?is a huge anvil-like peninsula linked to the mainland by a dry causeway.
Like Lindisfarne off Northumbria it is a palpably unworldly place. The sky is vast here, with the few wisps of cloud stretching off to a vanishing point in the distance. Near Caleta Vald?we saw what we had come for, penguins camped out on a gorgeous shingle beach leading down to a marine-blue bay in which they feed and swim.I read once that while part of the attraction of penguins is that we think of them as strangely human, they in turn think of us as misshapen penguins. Even though it is misleading to anthropomorphise these animals, it is easy to do so. Near Caleta Vald?they seemed to be doing things because they were fun and not, as is usually the case with animals, because of a utilitarian survival need. Some went for a dip, swimming with a jaunty side stroke while others came up to check us out. At one point a group of four walked across the beach, met another half dozen walking in the opposite direction and stopped for a chinwag, perhaps discussing the respective merits of squid and pilchards.
They stood around as if they'd forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, before all headed off in a third direction. Many had burrows up hills half a mile from the sea, and as they scuttled upwards they resembled doughty pensioners walking against the wind. They are great curtain twitchers: the slightest noise brings them out of their burrows and they feel free to pop their beak into their neighbour's hole. Only the picket fences were missing.Penguins, perhaps because they are now a fully protected species, can often display little fear of mankind. Further south at the remote and windswept port of San Julian, they live closer to humans than anywhere else in Argentina.
