Birch Aquarium’s Little Blue Penguin Chick Raised by Its Parents for the First Time

Birch Aquarium at Scripps just hit a pretty cool milestone in their Little Blue Penguin breeding program. For the first time, a penguin chick has been raised and reared by its penguin parents on the habitat in the Beyster Family Little Blue Penguins exhibit.

It’s a big deal for the program, which has been carefully working toward this moment since the exhibit opened in 2022.

A Young Pair Gets Their Shot

Every breeding season, the Penguin Care Team evaluates which penguin pairs might be ready to raise their own chicks. They look at things like past incubation history, nest location, and how the pair behaves within the colony while keeping daily notes on everything.

This season, a new, young pair partnered up and the female laid two eggs. Since they showed strong promise, the team decided to let them incubate and rear one of the eggs themselves. Turns out, they were naturals. Kayla Strate, Assistant Curator of Birds, says watching them care for and protect their chick has been a delight.

How Penguin Parenting Actually Works

The incubation period lasted about five weeks, with both parents taking turns keeping the eggs warm and regularly checking and turning them.

The Penguin Care Team inspected the breeding box daily and candled the egg weekly to make sure everything was developing properly. As the hatch date got closer, the team went on “pip-watch,” which means closely monitoring for that first tiny hole in the shell that signals the chick is starting to hatch.

The penguin-reared chick hatched in its breeding box on December 23, and the second chick hatched on December 25 in the aquarium’s Penguin Care and Conservation Center.

After hatching, the parents took turns foraging for food while one always stayed back to keep the chick warm and safe. The foraging penguin would swallow fish whole, store it in its stomach, head back to the nest, and regurgitate the meal for the chick.

As the chick grew, it gradually got used to the Penguin Care Team keepers, especially as it hit certain weight and growth milestones.

Socializing a Baby Penguin

The team wants the chick to be just as comfortable with keepers as it is with its parents, so it can eventually thrive as a confident member of the penguin colony.

That means slowly introducing things like hand-feeding and routine vet exams. During hand feeding sessions, the team brings out those shiny, fish-filled buckets used during regular penguin feedings, helping the birds associate the keepers with good things.

Now that the chick is hitting fledgling stage – when its fluffy down feathers get replaced by sleek, waterproof ones – the team has temporarily moved it behind the scenes. Once those waterproof feathers come in, the chick will start learning essential skills like swimming and socializing with the rest of the colony.

You can’t see the chick on habitat right now, but you can follow Birch Aquarium’s social media for updates as it grows.

Why This Matters for Conservation

Since opening the Little Blue Penguins exhibit in 2022, Birch Aquarium has welcomed penguin chicks for three years straight, which shows just how committed and skilled the Penguin Care Team is. This work is crucial for maintaining a healthy, genetically diverse population of Little Blue Penguins in human care.

Down the line, the aquarium will keep working with other Association of Zoos and Aquariums partners to transfer some of these offspring to other facilities so new penguin families can get started.

See you there!

Birch Aquarium’s penguin program keeps proving that conservation happens through patient, careful work, and this parent-reared chick is a pretty significant step forward.

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See you there, San Diego!