Spheniscus humboldti
Silhouette: Juan Carlos Jerí · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10%
The Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) is a medium-sized penguin. It resides in South America, along the Pacific coast of Peru and Chile. Its nearest relatives are the African penguin, the Magellanic penguin and the Galápagos penguin. The Humboldt penguin and the cold water current it swims in are both named after the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. The species is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN with no population recovery plan in place. The current wild population is composed of roughly 23,800 mature individuals and is declining. It is a migrant species.
Humboldt penguins nest on islands and rocky coasts, burrowing holes in guano and sometimes using scrapes or caves. In South America the Humboldt penguin is found only along the Pacific coast, and the range of the Humboldt penguin overlaps that of the Magellanic penguin on the central Chilean coast. It is vagrant in Ecuador and Colombia. The Humboldt penguin has been known to live in mixed species colonies with the Magellanic penguin in at least two different locations at the south of Chile.
The Humboldt penguin has become a focus of ecotourism over the last decades. Both the Humboldt penguin and the Humboldt... Wikipedia →
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Chile · 2020
© Cristian Pinto · XC520292 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lima | 🇵🇪 Peru |
No species of the same family or order lives in Lima, so these are its closest relatives here: other birds.
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Humboldt Penguin sighting in Lima on a given day, based on 148 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 110th most-seen of the 171 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, if each day is a fresh chance.
June and July
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Humboldt Penguin in Lima on a given day, against under 5% in August to May, the lowest months.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Humboldt Penguin sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Lima, in our data
Lima is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Humboldt Penguin sightings: under 5% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Humboldt Penguin is recorded against all the birds logged in Lima (148 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
