First, you hear them. It is almost the sound of Canada geese, not quite cattle. More than anything, it is the sound of New Year's Eve: long, cheap plastic trumpets, hundreds going at once. The landscape holds no clues to the sound's origins. This is desert, a wind-harried patch of Patagonia called Punta Tombo, 750 miles south of Buenos Aires. You would never guess the noise coming out of this bright, hot, arid South American wasteland is the noise of 500,000 penguins, the largest mainland breeding colony of Magellanic penguins on Earth.
Most people don't know that Magellanic penguins bray or that they live in temperate climes (as do four of 17 penguin species). Most people, including biologists, don't know much about these birds. The bulk of what is known has been discovered by one woman, penguin specialist Dee Boersma. Boersma holds a teaching post in the zoology department of ...
