Rockhopper penguins are distinguished by the irreverent crest of spiky yellow and black feathers that adorns their head.

Biologists left little ambiguity about this species’ preferred habitat when assigning its name. Rockhoppers are found bounding—rather than waddling, as most other penguins do—among the craggy, windswept shorelines of the islands north of Antarctica, from Chile to New Zealand.

These gregarious marine birds are among the world's smallest penguins, standing about 20 inches tall. They have blood-red eyes, a red-orange beak, and pink webbed feet.

During annual breeding times, rockhoppers gather in vast, noisy colonies, often numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to construct burrows in the tall tussock grasses near shore. They return to the same breeding ground, and often to the same nest,