The Snares Island get’s its name from its home – Snares Island, located in New Zealand. The Snares Island Penguin is very similar to the Fiordland penguin, as well as the Erect-chested penguin. Snares Island actually serves as a kind of private sanctuary for the Snares Island Penguin, and there are no humans allowed on the island. This legislation, as enforced by the government in New Zealand, has allowed for the penguin to not have to deal with many of the endangerments that many other penguins face, such as loss of habitat due to human development. However, the Snares Island penguin is very small, making it more vulnerable to some threats and predators. There are about 25, 000 breeding pairs of the Snares Island Penguin on Snares Island.
The Snares penguin is usually identified by its bill or beak. The Snares penguin’s bill is much thicker, larger, and even heavier looking than many other penguins that look similar to the Snares penguin. There is white all around the base of the beak.
When the Snares Island penguin breeds, they tend to breed in the summer. On Snares Island, the temperature is fairly moderate and warm, great for both vegetation and breeding. There is often a lot of fighting, and confrontation when it comes to fighting and finding both a place to nest and breed, as well as when it comes to finding and gathering nesting materials. The Snares Island couples will begin to find little holes in the ground, and then cover them with all of the materials that they gather together, usually grass, branches, sticks, and leaves from trees, that they find around, and use them to line their nest or burrow. When the nest is finished being built by the two Snares Island penguins, the female Snares Island penguin will then lay its two eggs, and like many other penguins, the first egg won’t hatch at all. Both the male and female Snares Island Penguin will incubate the egg that lives on and sticks it out, for at least two months. The egg will then hatch, and the female Snares Island Penguin goes out to hunt for food, while the male Snares Island Penguin will stay behind and look after the newly hatched penguin. The younger Snares Island chicks will stick together to protect one another, until they are old enough to look for one another.