The Bathing Parade

One of the amusements which give great delight to all the penguins is the rain.They love it. When  a shower falls, you will see them coming out from the cover of their nests, standing in the open, and shaking their flippers in quite obvious enjoyment. Indeed, most of their fun is connected in one way or another with water.

Now and again, while Mrs. Penguin is on duty, you will see Mr Penguin rise languidly from slumber, stretch his flippers, set his head on one side and look at his wife, as if informing her that he thinks he will go for a little stroll, 'just to stretch his legs' . That of course, means that he is going round the corner for a drink. He waddles off down the path to the sea, and very likely he will not return for quite a time. Sleeping in the sun is thirsty work! Mrs. Penguin may think it desirable to hide her feelings about beings thus deserted, but she doesn't really mind, and as soon as her husband takes this turn on guard she will probably go off and patronise the same establishment.

The sea, indeed, is the greatest and never-failing source of entertainment for the penguins. There, at their very door-steps, are all the delights of a seaside holiday.

There is a regular bathing parade every morning, and all except the moulters and the parents on duty join it as a matter of course. I could never discover whether or not there was a fixed time for it. But early in the morning, if you were, let us say, on that part of the island which I called 'Salisbury Plain' - acres of flat. earthy sand, dotted with low bushes and very thick indeed with nesting burrows - you would see penguins come out of their homes and set off.

There would be a father from this nest and a mother from that, one or two newly married couples who had not yet learnt the essential wisdom of leaving a sentry, family parties of father and mother and two children - sometimes with a neighbour or two apparently attached to their group - here a smart young beau looking very pleased about the appearance of his feathers, there a sly looking creature apparently torn between love of the water and the thought of what he might be able to steal if he stayed behind - all starting in the same direction, that of the sea.

Strays go along too, knowing that they cannot brave the seas, but hoping, I suppose, that if they go down to the water's edge they may come across their parents.

Suppose we follow this family that has just left its nest. The two chicks lead the way, the younger looking extremely eager about it all and inclined to race on ahead, the other - his senior by exactly three days - looking pleased but just a trifle superior Then come mother and father, always watchful but with expressions which seem to suggest that they are only going down to the beach for the sake of the children - though that, of course, is entirely untrue.

The sight of the family party makes other penguins look up and realise what time of day it is: in a minute or two they inevitably follow.

The family takes a definite path. Penguins always do. Sometimes there is not the slightest apparent necessity for a path, but they will always go by the exact way they have gone before and as all the others g o. There is a well worn track across the rocks as well as over the earth, and there they go, waddling along and jumping from rock to rock. As they go, although they make no sound, they appear to chatter to one another and to other penguins who leave their nests to join them.

In one place, rain has turned the earth into slime, which doesn't provide much of a foothold: but that contingency has been provided for, the ground having been scored into a series of furrows so that it looks rather like gridiron. That has been done entirely by the penguins themselves -communal service, certainly. It is done with beaks pecking & scrapping at the slippery earth & banking it up into little ridges, close together: hard work, but the path is vital and a slippery earth is worse than useless, so it must always be kept in a proper state of repair on the furrowed earth it is not easy to slip - one can prance along and even put on a sprint in eagerness to reach the sea.

By now considerable parties have joined the little procession, so that there are twenty penguins or more all going the same way: and another group from another set of nesting burrows is converging on it, to swell its numbers.

The family with whom we started have three-quarters of a mile to walk to reach the sea - or at any rate to reach that part of the shore where the bathing parade is held. Once such parade is held daily at each of the sandy bays on the island, for though one can do some very creditable and enjoyable high diving where the shore is edged with rock, half the fun of a bathe, as everybody knows, is lying about on the sand.

It is absurd and incredible that these birds should march six or eight abreast, some five hundred of them, and keep to a road.
Yet it is exactly what they are doing, and when once we have got over our astonishment at the sight we are prepared to believe anything of them. It would no longer surprise us if they carried banners . . or wore red neckties. . . or sang songs.

The penguins, constantly growing in numbers, have now reached the big rocks which we named 'The Mappin Terraces ' . Here, two more processions join them. and a great many other birds leave their rock-homes and fall in at the rear. The column must surely be two or three thousand strong -it seems to stretch for half a mile. There is a good deal of jostling and treading on toes - that is because the sea is at last in sight and everybody is in a hurry.

Now at last comes the great moment when the sands themselves are reached by the advance guard. All the younger members, as they feel the sand under their feet. become too excited to walk. They try to break into a run, but when your legs are only about one-ninth the length of your body, that is hardly possible, and the only thing to do is to go down on to 'all fours' and scramble along, knocking up a great cloud of dust as you go, on flippers as well as feet.

The more sedate and elderly parties follow with dignity. What's the sense in hurrying when there's the whole day before you? There'll be room enough for all in the sea, anyhow. So they waddle forward, watching their neighbours and trying, despite the crowd, to keep an eye on their own children.

The family with which we started - though I am afraid we rather lost sight of it in the huge crowd, now several thousand strong - is already there. They haven't lost any time, or lost the advantage that they had from leading the whole procession The youngsters are in the sea, paddling through the ripples, father has stopped among his friends on the sand, and mother is rather anxiously hurrying after the children. She has to see that they have lessons before they play any games: they weren't at all good yesterday at the diving. She swims a few feet from the shore then suddenly lowers her head and disappears. It is as near to instantaneous movement as anything you can imagine. Then up she comes again twenty yards away, and looks back to make sure that the chicks are copying her.

Father, having finished his chat, looks at the water, and decides that it would be pleasant to have a quiet paddle at the waters edge before going farther in. Looking exactly like an elderly gentleman at Margate, he walks with great seriousness through the shallow water, where it can just ripple gently across his feet, and now and then he stops, watching the more adventurous bathers and thinking, apparently, how very pleasant a penguin's life can be. Later, he too will become adventurous, but he likes to do things by degrees, first a gentle paddle, then a swim, and finally a glorious burst of diving.

The chicks by this time have finished their lesson, which today has been much more successful; they have at last caught that knack of ducking their heads at the same instant that their flippers go out like oars and their feet stretch out stiffly behind them. They are still rather slow about it, but that will come with practice, and so their mother lets them off further instruction, and leaves them to float happily on the surface while she looks around for some form of entertainment for herself.

There is plenty of it. There must by now be more than a thousand penguins in the sea - apart from ten thousand or more on the sands.

All sorts of games are in progress, for although the penguins may seem slow creatures on shore, they are positively frisky as soon as they get into the water.

Some are performing solo feats - floating, rolling so that the sea splashes their backs, then turning sudden somersaults, diving and rising like porpoises, and spinning round and round like Catherine-wheels, or (to be more exact) in the manner of bluebottle flies that have fallen on their backs in a cup of water. Others are playing in groups, diving under one another, or having a regular tug-of-war with some floating piece of seaweed.

Suddenly one, a little farther from the shore than the others, will turn, dive beneath the surface and make off at great speed for the land. In an instant the water is clear, without a single penguin to be seen .... It is exactly as if the scout had cried 'Shark!' I believe this is all part of a favourite game, very often played - the sort of game which our own small children play, telling each other that there is a boogy man at the garden gate and running pell-mell for safety, although not one of them really believes in the existence of boogy men at all.

In any case, all the penguins pick up the alarm, make for the shore, waddle on to the dry sand, and stand looking back at the sea. They wait there for quite a time, the more excitable working themselves up into a state of nerves about it, until some restless bird decides that the game is no longer worth playing and leads the way again into the sea.

Meanwhile mother paddles half-way across the bay and joins a group of other sportive penguins on a piece of rock, just submerged by the incoming tide - a splendid place for a game of ' I 'm the King of the Castle' . Two penguins land on it, the water coming just up to the white feathers of their bodies, and then, when anyone else tries to land, these two drive them off, partly by pushing and partly by some playful smacking with flippers.

Father, having finished his paddle, is almost ready for his bathe. But not quite. He must stroll along the shore first, stopping, for all the world like a rather bored old gentleman at a seaside resort, to gossip again with his cronies.

I wish I could manage to show how exactly like men and women the penguins are. Again and again, as I sat on a rock watching this bathing parade, I was reminded of familiar scenes at home. All the best-known seaside types were there: the nervous mothers who won't let their children wander out of sight, the confident mothers who believe in letting children fend for themselves while they have a well-earned holiday, the bully who can't walk along the sands without barging into everybody else, the rather stout party whose ideal holiday is a quiet nap on the sands, the jolly soul who seems to cry, 'Come along everybody, let's have some fun!' They are all there, every one of them....

Along the well-worn path made by generations of other penguins to whom high diving has been a passion, the father of our family - forgetting, one must fear, all about that family, or perhaps serenely confident that it is bound to be right with its mother looking after it - makes his way over the great smooth boulders. He sees one or two families sheltering in rocky hollows, and others - even as close to the sea as this - seated on eggs beneath overhanging ledges of rock. He pays no attention to them: he is intent on his purpose, wondering perhaps whether this time he could go in from the very summit of the rock, a dive of nearly twenty feet.

He comes to the edge of the rock. Below him is the divers' pool, fringed with surf-bathed rocks. There he can dive in perfect safety, through flying spray into deep water. He poises himself for a second: then, feet first and with flippers extended, he dives. Straight into the water he goes, flippers moving backward in the first swimming stroke as he disappears beneath the surface.
By the afternoon very few penguins are bathing but the shore is crowded. Thousands of penguins are lying at full length, either asleep already or preparing themselves for slumber. It is the same on every other sandy shore on the island. The nesting grounds are comparatively deserted, but the bays at this time of day are thronged with sleeping penguins.

They sleep right through the heat of the day, and then when the cool of the evening comes they rise, one by one, refresh themselves with another dip, and begin the homeward trek

Once again the long procession is formed, and as they turn their backs to the sea, the light of the setting sun falls on the chest of these thousands of odd little creatures and turns their white feathers into silver. It is suddenly a procession of snow-white birds, when seen from the front, although if you went to the rear of the column you would see a very different picture of black backs and bobbing heads silhouetted against the sun.

Van the Penguin Man
Guided tours and lectures on the African Penguin
H.J. Van Der Merwe
Specialist Tour Guide Boulders Beach Jackass Colony
Tel 082-921-5724
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