World Penguin Day: Magellanic Penguin

The 25th April 2026 is World Penguin Day. To mark this, and the 350th anniversary of the publication of Francis Willughby’s Ornithologia, this post will focus on part of a description of a penguin in Ornithologia.

The species in Ornithologia that actually bore the name penguin was the now extinct species known today as the Great Auk. The Great Auk is considered by many as the “original penguin”. When Western seamen visited the Southern Hemisphere and came across birds with a similar colouring and nature to the Penguin/Great Auk seen in Europe, they applied the name of penguin to them. It is known that the species are unrelated.

However, one species of penguin is present in Ornithologia. Willughby did question whether it might be the same species as the Penguin/Great Auk, but there were enough differences to get a semi-separate entry. It was actually known as the Magellanic Goose and the description of this bird in Ornithologia was taken primarily from the writings of Carolus Clusius. This species now has the English common name of Magellanic Penguin and the taxonomical name of Spheniscus magellanicus, which it was given by Johann Forster in 1781.

In the entry in Ornithologia, it appears that John Ray added that he had also found a description of this bird in Edward Terry’s book “A Voyage to East India” (1655). Terry described the bird as great and lazy with a white head and a coal-black body. Ray additionally commented that because Penguin in the Welsh language meant white head (Pen (head) gwyn (white)), in light of Terry’s and Clusius’ descriptions, he thought that the origin of the name Penguin was because of its white head. However, he also admitted that the Penguin/Great Auk seen in Britain did not have a white head, only some white about the eyes.

A Magellanic Penguin in nonbreeding plumage on Magdalena Island in the Straight of Magellan, 2025, by Polinova, CC-BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The description of the Magellanic Penguin given by Clusius was of birds seen near the Strait of Magellan and he described them as seafowl of the goose-kind but with a different bill. Their bill was bigger than a Raven’s, but not so raised. They were very fat and the size of a large goose. The adults weighed 13 to 16 pounds (about 5.9-7.26kg), whilst the juveniles weighed 8 to 12 pounds (about 3.63-5.44kg). The upper side of the body was covered with black feathers, the underside with white. The neck, which was short and thick, had a ring or collar of white feathers. Their skin was thick like that of swine. They lacked wings, having instead two small skinny wing-fins that hung down by their sides like two little arms. They were covered on the upper side with short, narrow, stiff, thick-set feathers. On the underside the feathers were smaller and stiffer, and those were white, although in some places black feathers intermixed. Its wings were completely unfit for flight, but helped the birds to swim swiftly. It had a very short tail and black, flat feet like the feet of Geese, but not so broad. They walked erect, with their heads high, their fin-like wings hanging down by their sides like arms, so that to those who saw them from afar they appeared like diminutive men.

They fed only upon fish and were on land only in breeding time. They dug deep holes like rabbit burrows in the shore. This could make the ground sometimes so hollow that the seamen walking over it would often sink up to their knees in those vaults.

Further Reading: John Ray, Francis Willughby's Ornithologia, 1678, p.322.

Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.

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