Endangered
Erect-crested penguin
Eudyptes sclateri
The erect-crested penguin is a penguin endemic to the New Zealand region and only breeds on the Bounty and Antipodes Islands.
Appearance
This is a small-to-medium-sized, yellow-crested, black-and-white penguin, at 50–70 cm (20–28 in) and weighing 2.5–6 kg (5.5–13.2 lb). The male is slightly larger than the female and as in most crested penguins has a larger bill. It has bluish-black to jet black upper parts and white underparts, and a broad, bright yellow eyebrow-stripe that extends over the eye to form a short, erect crest.
With a mean body mass in males of 6.38 kg (14.1 lb) (sample size 22) and females of 5.4 kg (12 lb) (sample size 22), the erect-crested penguin is the largest of the crested penguin species and as the fourth heaviest extant penguin, being nearly as heavy on average as the gentoo penguin.
Published measurements include mass about 6.382.
Range and habitat
Erect-crested penguins breed on the Bounty and Antipodes Islands. Previous records of small breeding populations have also been reported from Campbell Island and the Auckland Islands. In the 1940s a breeding pair was documented on the Otago Peninsula on the New Zealand mainland. Individuals have been found as far away as the Falkland Islands and it is also a vagrant to Argentina, Antarctica and Australia.
The erect-crested penguin is a penguin endemic to the New Zealand region and only breeds on the Bounty and Antipodes Islands.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It spends the winter at sea and little is known about its biology and breeding habits.
In crisis
Populations are believed to have declined during the last few decades of the twentieth century, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as being "endangered".
Erect-crested penguin is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Erect-crested penguin, Wikidata item Q838959. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
