Southern rockhopper penguins on the Falkland Islands
© Heike Odermatt/Minden Picture
Rockin' with the rockhoppers
For World Penguin Day, we're featuring a jaunty group of southern rockhopper penguins on a Falkland Islands beach. Most penguins slide over the ice on their bellies, but these small penguins opt for more aerobic locomotion—they hop. Of all penguin species, rockhoppers are among the most numerous. But pollution, overfishing, and climate change have taken a toll: Their population has declined by about 30 percent over the last 30 years. Today, there's an estimated 1.5 million breeding pairs of rockhoppers. About 1 million of those are southern rockhopper couples, like these, with the northern and eastern subspecies filling out the rest of numbers.
Brown bear mother and cub in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska
Two Old World swallowtail butterflies on a flower
Southern cassowary father with chicks, Kuranda, Queensland, Australia
Elephant walking in the Okavango River, Botswana
Long-beaked common dolphin pod and diving Cape gannets hunting Pacific sardines off the Eastern Cape, South Africa
An indigo bunting at the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove in Audubon, Pennsylvania
Spotted deer, Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, India
Scarlet macaw in Costa Rica
