Emperor Penguin

Available for over a year

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the emperor penguin from the Antarctic Peninsula. With temperatures down to minus 50oC, midwinter blizzards scouring one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, this is not an obvious location for raising young. Yet at the heart of this landscape, the world's largest penguin, the emperor, stands guard over their young. Tightly-packed colonies of hundreds or sometimes thousands of birds huddle together, to conserve heat. The male broods the single egg on his feet, protected under folds of bare abdominal skin. Females travel up to 100km from the colony in search of food, using a technique called tobogganing which is far more efficient than walking on their short legs. Harsh though the landscape is in midwinter, all this activity is co-ordinated to allow the young to fledge into the relatively warmth of an Antarctic summer.