Review: Vivien Horler

An Inconvenience of Penguins – Epic voyages in pursuit of the world’s most beloved bird, by Jamie Lafferty (Wildfire)

Some people collect stamps or medals – Jamie Lafferty collects penguins.

He’s a Scottish-born freelance travel writer, and in the Galapagos he conceived the idea of seeing and photographing all 18 species of penguin.

Now the thing about penguins, with the broad exception of our African penguins, is that they tend to be found in far-flung places like Antarctica and South Georgia and the Galapagos – all difficult or expensive to get to, hence the title of this book.

It also didn’t help that Lafferty had very little money, which made him dependent on helpful travel editors and travel and cruise companies that were willing to give him a free trip in exchange for some positive copy.

And then there was his timing. The book opens in Gold Harbour on South Georgia, an island somewhere between the Antarctic Peninsula and the Falkland Islands which is home to millions of beautiful Kings.

It is early January 2020, and Lafferty happily considers his year ahead: after his current voyage he has lined up a month in India, three weeks in British Columbia and a month in various countries of West Africa.

“I’d been freelance for four years and this felt like it was finally going to be the one when everything would click into place.”

Instead what happened was Covid-19 and the international lockdown, which meant he didn’t earn any money for at least nine months.

But penguin collectors are a determined bunch, and when travel partly reopened in September that year he got himself a trip to the Galapagos, where he saw the endemic Galapagos penguin, the Humboldt, and the Magellanic.

It was a while before Lafferty spotted penguins there. He was snorkelling off Floreana when to his delighted amazement he spotted two penguins focusing on a ball of fish.

“Over my years of visiting Antarctica I’d seen hundreds of thousands of the birds on land, but this was the first time I’d seen them like this, flapping and gliding, banking and diving. All of their terrestrial idiocy was gone, replaced with efficiency as graceful as it was lethal.”

This sighting was seminal. Lafferty was thrilled and gleeful, deciding he wanted more. Could he somehow manipulate his travel-writing career to see more species of penguins?

It would’t be easy, he knew. “Every penguin seemed to live on the edge of the known world, so far from home [in the UK]; in that moment there were still species I didn’t even know existed, living in places I’d never heard of.”

He also had no money and would be dealing with a moribund travel industry.

But he did it, finding the 18 species from the giant Emperors and fabulously decorative Kings in the Antarctic to to the tiny Little Penguins in Australia and New Zealand. Spread around the southern hemisphere (which is why polar bears never eat penguins), they can be found from coastal deserts to island rain forests, some on archipelagos so remote they do not appear on most maps.

The chapter on our African penguins made for depressing reading. Lafferty spoke to vet David Roberts who was attached to Sanccob. Roberts thought the African penguins’ prospects were poor. “Without drastic action, the number will continue to decline. Drastic action is needed with fish stocks and the environment they’re in, and that requires members of the general public to put pressure on politicians.”

Lafferty was also given permission to visit Dassen Island near Yzerfontein. Back in the day, a film made by Cherry Kearton called Dassen: An adventure in search of laughter, featuring nature’s greatest little comedians. was seen by an eight-year-old David Attenborough.

He said: “It captured my childish imagination and made me dream of travelling to far-off places to film wild animals.”

Lafferty also interviewed conservationist Johan Visagie on Dassen, who told him: “They’re an indicator species of marine health. Something like penguins that can’t fly, that need high-energy expenditure to reach its food – if they start struggling, then it’s a very early indication of an unhealthy system.”

Lafferty has a good ear for accents, and one of his throwaway remarks bugged me. He’s visiting Boulders Beach and begins his SA chapter thus: “When the shouting started, part of me prepared for conflict. From the top of a gentle hill came an ungentle accent – a woman with a strong Afrikaner inflection was roaring at me as I approached my car … That accent is pre-tuned for belligerence…”.

The woman was in fact helpfully suggesting he check under his car before he drove off, and yes, there was a penguin under it.

He doesn’t think much of the Australian accent either: “… a man with a crevassed face and an Aussie accent that called to mind someone sharpening a fork with their teeth”. Bit rich for a bloody Glaswegian, I’d say.

He packs a lot of information into this volume, with an often hilarious turn of phrase and many funny or wry footnotes. But clearly there’s a serious side too. Penguins, the comical little birds we all love to watch, are in trouble.

In an epilogue he lists the 18 species of penguin, and how their populations are doing – generally not at all well.

In 2007 there were an estimated 1 200 adult Galapagos penguins, and their population is decreasing. Yellow-eyed penguins, found in New Zealand, about 2 600 in 2020, population collapsing. African penguins in South Africa, estimated at 19 800 adults, population collapsing. (To my joy, there were about 6 million adult Kings in 2009, populating increasing.)

Eleven of the species are seeing their populations decreasing or collapsing.

This is an often entertaining read which also packs a rather depressing punch.