Penguins in the Desert

Most of us wouldn’t think to look for penguins in a hot desert, but every year along a windswept edge of coastal Patagonia, hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins gather to rear their young at Punta Tombo, Argentina. It is the largest penguin colony in the world outside of Antarctica, and for the past three decades, biologist Dee Boersma has followed them there. Eric Wagner joined her team for six months in 2008, and in Penguins in the Desert, he chronicles that season in the remarkab...