Blown off course by the current cold weather, this penguin was spotted this morning in a garden near Bampton, Cumbria. Wildlife experts are on their way from throughout the area to try to identify it. Goldfish in a nearby garden pond had disappeared overnight as the penguin foraged for food.
3 comments:
That penguin must have been caught by a very strong wind, given that they live in the Antarctic, and they don't fly! Maybe it was dropped from an aeroplane.
This is actually one of the rarer species from Antarctica - the Dictator Penguin, which can fly to some extent, but is more likely to have arrived via a combination of wind-assisted flight and swimming (they can cover 300 miles per day swimming). Their long distance travelling could be related to a possible descendacancy from the early Antarctic explorers.
Poor thing, swimming all the way up north for a month or two en route to its summer holiday at Spitzbergen, sticks its head up for a look round while it's passing the Isle of Man, and then - whoosh! - gets whisked up by a strong wind and deposited with the precipitation in Bampton. It could probably do with some fish & chips.
Post a Comment