King Penguin with Young Chick South Georgia
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King Penguins Walking, Falkland Islands
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King Penguins at Waters Edge with Mountains
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Instead, they lay only one egg at a time and carry it around on their feet covered with a flap of abdominal skin called the brood patch. It is looked after in this manner for the whole of the average 55 day incubation period, being shuffled from one parent to the other every 6-18 days. When relieved of the egg, that parent then goes off to sea on an extended food foraging trip.

Upon hatching, the chicks continue to be protected on the parents feet and the brood patch for another 30-40 days after which time, they are large enough to be able to regulate their temperature for themselves. It can still be a wait of many days, 3-14 between parents swapping duties, so the chick has to wait some considerable time between feeds.

King penguins live on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands rather than in the deep south. There are two distinct groups, "early breeders" and "late breeders". Early breeders lay eggs in November which hatch around mid-January, the chicks are reared and reach about 90% of adult weight by April when they are independent.

Late breeders lay and incubate their eggs from January until March. Parental visits become fewer and further between over the winter and the chicks are left to survive blizzards and severe conditions on their own. They huddle together in crèches and keep alive by depleting their fat reserves, the parents retuning to feed them about once every four to six weeks.

It can be as much as 3 months between feeds however and a 5 month wait has even been endured by a surviving chick. The chicks may lose up to 50% of their body weight in these intervals where they wait for a parent to return and feed them.

Though harsh, the winter conditions are no where near what the emperor penguins are enduring further south.

As food supplies improve in spring, so the parents are able to return more frequently and then by December, the last of the chicks have left to fend for themselves.

The parents will then moult, leave to go to sea for several weeks to fatten up again and then become the late breeders for that season.

Any parents that have lost their eggs or chicks during the winter will become that seasons early breeders.

In this unusual breeding cycle, king penguins usually only average one chick every two years or at most two in a three year cycle. The king penguin is restricted in range to ice free areas as a consequence of having to feed its chick through the winter.

King Penguin Colony, St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia
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King penguins at Fortuna bay South Georgia
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Breeding is preceded by a moult where they lose their old feathers and have them replaced by new ones. Like the juveniles, adults cannot fish for food until they have a new fully intact and functioning set of feathers, so this moult period is one of starvation while living on food reserves.

Return to the breeding colony by the adults does not happen en masse as it does with some other penguin species, so King penguins will frequently change partners for each breeding cycle rather than pairing up with the same partner.

King penguins have been equipped with depth recorders and have been found to dive to at least 50m (160ft) in about half of their dives. They regularly dive deeper than this and have been recorded at up to 500m (1600ft). Deep dives tend only to occur during the day time with only shallow dives being recorded at night which account for only a minority of fishing dives.

They hunt prey that produce light by bioluminescence which is presumably the way by which the penguins can see to fish at night.

In fact so useful are they in carrying depth recorders, that some king penguins have been used to carry depth / temperature sensors with them on dives to give scientists a 3-dimensional record of sea temperature at various depths in the Southern Ocean.

King penguins are subjected to tourist presence mainly in the Falkland Islands and also on South Georgia, the impact tourism is very low currently. Penguins in general are tolerant of tourists and are not alarmed by their presence as long as they do not enter the colony.

King penguins are currently not influenced by any fishery as they themselves are not taken and their prey is not taken commercially at the moment, so industrial fishing is not affecting their numbers.