Macaroni penguin female are similar in appearance; males tend to be slightly larger. Males also bear relatively larger bills, which average around compared to in females; this feature has been used to tell the sexes apart. Immature birds are distinguished by their smaller size, smaller, duller-brown bill, dark grey chin and throat, and absent or underdeveloped head plumes, often just a scattering of yellow feathers. The crest is fully developed in birds aged three to four years, a year or two before breeding age. Macaroni penguins moult once a year, a process in which they replace all of their old feathers. They
Macaroni (fashion) Macaroni (fashion) A macaroni (or formerly maccaroni) in mid-18th-century England was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" Young men who had been to Italy on the Grand Tour had developed a taste for "maccaroni", a type of pasta little known in England then, and so they were said to belong to the "Macaroni Club". They would refer to anything that was fashionable or "à la mode" as "very maccaroni". Horace Walpole wrote to a friend in 1764