#macquarie island

[sitting-on-me-bum]

King penguins line the shore at Macquarie Island; Fiordland, New Zealand.

Image credits: Aaron Russ; Steve Bradley

[wachinyeya]

[cannibalguy]

Convict Cannibals: FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE (Norman Dawn, 1927)

For the Term of His Natural Life is a 1927 Australian film directed, produced and co-written by Norman Dawn. It is based on the 1874 novel by Marcus Clarke, and was the most expensive Australian silent film ever made. It remains one of the most famous Australian films of the silent era. John Laws, in the trailer above, calls it “the grandest of them all, the climax of Australia’s silent cinema.”…

[dougdimmadodo]

Fast Fauna Facts #27 - Royal Penguin (Eudyptes schlegeli)

Family: Penguin Family (Spheniscidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Near Threatened

Named for their striking yellow crests which resemble crowns, Royal Penguins (not to be mistaken for the much larger Emperor Penguin or King Penguin) are found primarily on Macquarie Island (a small, largely rocky island between southern Aotearoa/New Zealand and northern Antarctica,) although they are also occasionally spotted on other neighbouring islands. Like most penguins Royal Penguins typically roost and nest in large, noisy colonies on rocky, well-vegetated beaches and leave the shore periodically to hunt for small fish, crustaceans and squids; members of this species rarely travel far from their colony when searching for prey, and as such several neighbouring colonies may coexist with limited competition for resources. Royal Penguins were historically extensively hunted for their blubber which was used to produce oil, but following the banning of penguin hunting on Macquarie in the late 1910's their populations have slowly recovered and are now believed to be stable.

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[yeeshastone]

This months subspecies sheet is out! (already? I know!)

This species is known for their amazing cooking skills and golden crown of feathers. Every year a large cooking competition is held on the Schlegeli home island of Macquarie where the most amazing dishes are made. There are prizes for the most tasty dish, but also prize for those that can make a tasty dish with some of the most disgusting tasting ingredients. This is done in the spirit of the Schlegeli legend where their ancestors had to eat the horrible tasting crown of thorns plant to survive.

full subspecies sheet and legend can be found here

the amazing artist for this subspecies legend is

[gameraboy2]

Penguins on the beach and the remains of the wreck of "The Gratitude", Nuggets Beach, Macquarie Island, 1911

[projectourworld]

It would be good to connect with nature, undiscovered, untouched by humans. Lord Howe Island, Australia

‘The fortnightly supply ship, Island Trader, out of Port Macquarie, anchored in the lagoon under Mounts Lidgbird and Bower.’

Photograph: Neil Andrews / Guardian #nature

[ketrinadrawsalot]

The royal penguin's largest breeding colony is on Macquarie Island, between New Zealand and Antarctica. Though the penguin oil industry is long gone, they face new threats in the form of rats, cats, plastic pollution, and competition with commercial fishing.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Royal penguin (Eudyptes schlegeli) walks along the beach. Sandy bay, Macquarie Island, Australian Territory.

Photographer: Doug Gimesy

[afeelgoodblog]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/23/macquarie-island-marine-park-southern-ocean-australia

Good news!

I love penguings

[im-a-simp898]

eats u

Seriously? You're really serious right now? I cannot tell if I have sensory problems or if I actually just witnessed a statement with such an immense amount of sheer stupidity. You know, I have seen the most bizarre things from some guy in class jerking it to Ronald Reagan tentacle hentai, to people linking Chernobyl to penis-shaped aliens, but your comment is by far the most fucking idiotic thing I have ever had the kind of horrible fucking luck one requires to hear your stupid fucking post. From this point on, when I think of you, I will imagine a diseased turtle taking an enormous dump, with so much unbelievably large amounts of shit that all the protons inside of the methyl sulfide this horrendous crap contains spontaneously fuse into uranium-235 that I can use to shove a nuke up your sub-mental ass. You can write that off as an exaggeration but it is 100% true from the bottom of my already-empty heart. I legitimately think that you lack intelligence. I would say you're mentally unstable but then I couldn't blame the terribly ignorant fucking post on you. I literally cannot comprehend how amazingly dimwitted your dumb ass is. I have trouble understanding the laws of physics, space, and time as if all laws of reality have been devastated and disintegrated due to how dense you are. I could write a damn book on your lack of intelligence that is so long, one could read the entire Series of Unfortunate Events series, watch the entire Godfather trilogy, and invent fucking time travel itself before it could even be published under a first edition. Half-Life 3 would be released centuries before I could finish the first chapter describing your purely pointless state of mind. I honestly cannot tell if you were abused too much or not abused enough, because you clearly did not go to school enough to get a proper fucking education. To quote George Washington, "Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company." In that case, I'm getting as far away from you as possible. Hell, I'm actually unironically considering moving to Macquarie Island just to be isolated from your brain cell-killing words for the rest of my now-miserable life. I would rather go insane from thinking about you to the point where I pull a Cast Away and consider sexual relations with a volleyball than actually spending time anywhere near you. There is honestly no other way of putting it; you're an irritating asshole who contributes absolutely nothing to this already dreadful planet. And that's saying a lot considering the fact that I've heard of carbon dioxide levels reaching 400 parts per million, Donald Trump becoming president, and toxic fucking comment sections that contain your stupid bullshit. And again I go, being confused by whatever quantum physics you are using to defy the laws of physics with your stupidity, to the point where I'm saying you are worse than yourself. I have nothing else that is most definitely as horrible as you to compare to except you yourself. How does that make you feel? Like a turtle taking a nuclear shit? I really don't have a single shit to give anyway, because you are living proof that there is no hope for humanity left. Really went downhill after that whole thing where Rome fell; that made a lot of people pissed off. But not as pissed off as I am after reading your stupid shit. No, buddy, if I should even call you that, I am not pissed off at your comment. I am FURIOUS. I am so furious that I will personally take that radioactive turtle shit myself just so I can rid the world of your baffling levels of unadulterated doltishness. You are more dull than oxygenated magnesium or even a samurai sword that hasn't been sharpened for a thousand years. And you better be glad that the sword is dull, because if it wasn't, it would be shoved up your ass just like the nuclear turtle shit. I am so fucking angry that even watching an Adam Sandler movie will make me happier than I am right now.

[drhoz]

#2237 - Breutelia sp.

One of at least 200 species in the genus, from the family Bartramiaceae. One possibility is B. pendula, found in Australia and New Zealand, and the subantarctic islands of Macquarie, Campbell, the Aucklands and the Antipodes, but without seeing the spore capsules and having a microscope I really can't go further than genus.

The genus is found worldwide, and named after botanist Johann Christian Breutel (1788–1875).

Huka Falls, Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand

[fatehbaz]

Oz Rock bands were big in Brazil in the 1990s. Australian surfers know its breaks. [...] [I]n the past decade [2005-2015] Brazil has had the second fastest rate of migration to Australia [...].

Australia’s connection with Brazil began in 1787 with the First Fleet voyage. This was thanks to the port of Rio’s location in the South Atlantic and a centuries-long British-Portuguese alliance – unique among European powers in the Age of Empires. The First Fleet had three layovers on its relatively cautious eight month voyage from Britain: a week in the Spanish colony of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, a month at Rio in the Portuguese colony of Brazil and a month at the Dutch East India Company’s Cape colony in South Africa. Fleet commander Arthur Phillip had not intended to rest and resupply at Rio but sailing conditions made it prudent to do so. And Phillip’s former service in the Portuguese navy ensured a cordial welcome from Rio’s colonial authorities.  

At this time, as Bruno Carvalho writes in Porous City: A Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (2013), Rio enjoyed rising status within the Portuguese Empire. In 1763 it had been named the new capital of Brazil. In 1808 Portuguese royals fled to Rio to escape Napoleon and remained there at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. As a consequence, Rio could boast of being the only American city to serve as a centre of European power.

One First Fleet official lamented how little the British knew of Rio. This came to be addressed, as Luciana Martins notes in A Bay to be Dreamed Of: British Visions of Rio de Janeiro (2006), as increasing numbers of British visitors ventured there during the 19th century. Visitors included New South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and later Charles Darwin – along with thousands of convict and free migrants on board ships calling at the port of Rio.

Writing in Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (2005), Emma Christopher observed that in Australian history books, travel from Britain to Australia seemed to have been “covered as if in the blink of an eye”.

This inspired her to write of the “watery non-places” of the journey not as voids, but rather as places where much transnational history was lived [...].

[J]ournals by intending Australian colonists such as Macquarie’s wife Elizabeth allow glimpses of colonial Rio through colonial Australian eyes. Elizabeth Macquarie assessed Rio with keen intelligence and, more challengingly – as Jane McDermid has argued in recent research on histories of the British abroad – a callously casual racism.

First Fleet journals tell us that, in 1787, convicts confined to ship at Rio witnessed enslaved West Africans rowing Portuguese fruit sellers around the anchored Fleet transports in decoratively festooned boats.

Convicts overheard and exchanged stories from officials permitted shore leave: stories of the songs of captive West Africans awaiting sale at the port marketplace; of colourful Portuguese Catholic institutions and festivities that were exotic to straight-laced British Protestants. Stories of being forbidden, on pain of death, to venture to hinterland jewel mines. Onshore at Rio, colonial migrants bound for Australia befriended Portuguese colonists, despite the language barrier. They purchased curios. They passed judgement – glowing and harsh – on the people of the Portuguese colony, its natural and built environment, just as Brazilians in turn scrutinised them.

---

Text by: Julie McIntyre. “I Go to Rio: Australia’s forgotten history with Brazil.” The Conversation. 16 September 2015. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[pleistocene-pride]

Pygoscelis papua, better known as the gentoo penguin, is a species of penguin in the genus pygoscelis which is native to the waters of the southern, south atlantic, and south pacific oceans with notable colonies occurring on the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and Kerguelen Islands, Macquarie Island, Heard Islands, Crozet Islands, the South Shetland Islands, and the Antarctic Peninsula. Gentoos mainly feed upon crustaceans, such as krill, squat lobsters, and shrimp but are also known to eat a variety of fish, squid, and octopi. Gentoo penguins are themselves preyed upon by sea lions, leopard seals, orcas, skuas, and giant petrels. Reaching some 28 to 35 inches (70 to 90cms) tall and 9 to 19lbs (4.5 to 8.5kgs) in weight, gentoos are the third largest species of penguin after the emperor penguin and the king penguin. They are the fastest swimming of all birds reaching up to 22 mph (36 kmh). These birds sport a white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head, pale pink feet, and a bright orange-red bill. There tail is also remarkably long, the largest amongst penguins. Gentoo penguins typically mate for life, breeding in large colonies which gather in areas free from ice. Pairs build circular nests made of stones, the smoother the better. These stones are jealously guarded and highly prized, so much so that penguins often trade stones with each other often in exchange for food or sexual favors. Once the nests are build, two eggs are typically laid and incubated in shifts by both parents for 34 to 36 days until hatching. The young then remain in the nests for around 30 days before joining other chicks in the colony and forming crèches. The chicks moult into subadult plumage and go out to sea at around 80 to 100 days. Under ideal conditions a gentoo penguin may live up to 20 years.