Size:   
Height:    65 to 75 cm (26 to 35 inches) for average adult.
Weight:    3 to 8 kg (7 to 17 lbs) for average adult.
Royal Penguin is 10 to 20% taller than its Macaroni Penguin cousin.

Description:

• Only white faced penguin.
• Black and white.
• Golden yellow crest joins across forehead.
• Bill is large, reddish-orange brown with bare pink skin at base.   
• Juveniles covered with dark brownish-grey and white down.

Feet:   

• Pinkish.

Food:   

• Fish and a few squid.   

Rookeries:       

• Breed only on Macquarie Island and some surrounding islets.
• Nest on sandy or rocky slopes or rocky beaches in meager nests with few pebbles lining the edges.
• Instinct returns them to the same breeding site every year, they return to breed when they are 5 years old.
• Very noisy colonies with loud braying, gregarious group of penguins.

• Male return to the breeding grounds and collect pebbles, bones and dig a small hollow in the sand with their belly and feet to make a nest.
• Females return and courtship starts with a series of displays with outstretched flippers, heads pointing towards the sky while raucously braying in sequences.   
• The same pairs often come together year after year.
• The females lay 2 eggs, the first smaller than the second.  As soon as the second larger egg is laid; the first is pushed out of the nest.
• Females incubate the egg for the first 2 weeks when the male takes over the next 2 weeks.  Both parents are there when the chick hatches after about 35 days incubation.
• Females feed the chick during the first 20 days while the male guards the chick.
• Crèches form as the chicks reach 3 to 4 weeks of age.
• Parents go fishing together and return to feed the chick every 2 or 3 days.
• Parents returning from the sea go to their nest, call out to the chick which comes out of the crèches to the nest to feed.
• Chicks molt and start getting their adult feathers at about 6 weeks then leave the colony.
• Adults return to the nesting site to moult in early March after spending 5 weeks feeding and putting on the weight needed to endure the 24 to 29 days fast during which they renew their feathers.

Predators:       

• Skuas prey upon eggs and young chicks.
• Elephant Seals destroy eggs, chicks and sometimes adults as they move across nesting sites like steamrollers.
• New Zealand Fur Seals attack Royal Penguins from time to time.
• Wekas, an introduced bird on several islands including Macquarie Island, walk through the tussock grass snatching eggs and have decimated many colonies.

Other Facts:

• **One of 6 Crested Penguins Species:  1. Erect-crested Penguin  2. Fiordland Penguin 3. Macaroni Penguin  4. Rockhopper Penguin  5. Royal Penguin  6. Snares Penguin
• All 6 Crested Penguins lay 2 eggs but rear only one chick.
• Often considered the subspecies or "the white throated cousin" of the Macaroni Penguin.
• Royal and Macaroni Penguin are the only species where the head plumes meet on the forehead.