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Black and white penguin with yellow head plumes, short beak, and pink feet.

Southern rockhopper penguin

Eudyptes chrysocome
Where at Shedd?
Abbott Oceanarium
Diet Krill, small crustaceans and cephalopods
Size 20-22 inches (52-55 cm)
Type Birds
Range Antarctic warm, cold zone
Habitat Rocky shorelines

About the Southern rockhopper penguin

Rockhopper penguins were named for their unique mode of locomotion.

Did you know?

  1. You can identify the southern rockhopper penguins by the thin yellow crest feathers that extend behind their red eyes.

  2. Penguins condition their feathers with oil from an oil gland near their tails, helping their feathers repel water.

IUCN Red List Conservation Status

Association of Zoos & Aquariums Species Survival Plan®

This species is part of a program to support healthy, genetically diverse animal populations.

A rockhopper penguin spreads its thin wings and peers expressively up at a camera above it.
A rockhopper penguin stands in a nook of the penguin habitat.

Colorful Penguins

Rockhoppers stand out from the basic black-and-white penguin species with touches of hot color: red eyes, orange beaks and long chrome-yellow crest feathers like wild eyebrows. During mating displays, the birds shake their heads rapidly to make the long yellow plumes whirl. Rockhoppers are fiercely territorial and given to noisy displays, too. A breeding colony can be heard from miles away — not to mention through the inch-thick glass of Shedd’s penguin habitat.

Rockhopper penguins have short stumpy legs but can jump from rock to rock on shore quite easily.

Rock Nesters

Using available materials, male rockhoppers carefully select and arrange small rocks in a circle to keep his mate's eggs from rolling away. A nice nest will attract a female or reinforce an existing pair bond. Hauling the rocks one by one in his beak, a male is not above stealing better-looking stones from his neighbors in the breeding colony. Rockhoppers return to the same nest year after year. Pairs usually raise only one chick, taking turns with incubating, brooding and feeding.

Other birds