Île des Pingouins eroded by the sea, steep-sided, 4 km long and 1 km wide. Its surrounding coastal cliffs vary from 50 m to 300 m in height, making it virtually inaccessible by sea and rarely visited. It is free of introduced species, so has a relatively pristine biota compared with the other islands in the archipelago. At least 29 bird species breed on the island, which has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA). It has an exceptionally high density of seabirds, including a million pairs of macaroni penguins, 300 pairs of black-browed albatrosses, four pairs of Salvin's
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