“Eyelids, black throughout the first year; pure white in the adult at fourteen months and onwards.
“Feet, flesh red; dusky when first hatched, brightening in the first week or two. Immature and adult, pale flesh pink above, black beneath (in some cases piebald beneath).
“Claws, brown.”
In the majority of the chicks the down is uniformly dark and sooty, but here and there, in progeny of quite normal parents, one may find nestlings of so pale a grey as to be almost silvery white, with blackish heads, possibly a reversion to an earlier type, and, at any rate, suggestive of the young of the Emperor penguin, which perhaps represents the oldest stock of all. According to Dr. Bowdler Sharp, the colour of the head is in all cases blacker in the earlier stages than the rest of the body.[(8)]
As the chick ages the colour of its down changes, and all of it takes on a dull rusty brown colour. As it moults the abdomen and thighs change first, and white feathers appear in place of the down. Then come changes on the head, round the bill, and at the tail; the upper breast, neck, and back being the last parts to moult.
The feet, which in the young nestling have been almost black, change in colour to a brick-red that shows up very markedly against the rusty brown down, looking as if the legs were raw and inflamed. Later the permanent flesh colour is acquired, with black plantar surfaces. The nails are black at first, and later change to brown.
When the nestling down is shed, the resulting plumage is that of the adult, except that the throat is white instead of black. The upper part of the head and neck are bluish black, the throat, fore-neck, breast, and abdomen being a pure dazzling metallic white, a sharp line separating the white from the black areas. The flippers are the same bluish “tar” black on the back and white beneath.
In addition to the distinctive pure white plumage of the throat, the immature bird differs from the adult in one very marked particular, which is that the eyelids are black, as in the chick, and do not acquire the staring whiteness which is so distinctive of the adult Adélie penguin, increasing, as it does, the white area of the sclerotic so that the bird has the appearance of being perpetually surprised or very angry.
The iris is a rich reddish brown in the adults, but variable in the young.