The World's Littlest Penguins

posted by graham on December 06, 2024

When I was planning this trip, I kept asking friends who had been to Aotearoa New Zealand for input on what to do. One of those suggestions was to "see the little blue penguins who come ashore around dusk on the East coast of the Southern Island." We had a few days in Kaikōura and a few more in Dunedin planned, so as soon as we arrived at the former, we began asking around for details on where to find the penguins.

The locals told us that there was a Coast Guard station that was open to the public and that if you went there around dusk, that's where some penguins usually arrived each night. While traveling, we had been sticking to a pretty early bedtime (8 or 9pm) because we also tended to have early mornings, but springtime in the southern hemisphere meant that the sun was rising earlier and setting later, meaning civil twilight wasn't usually until 8:30.

We bravely stayed up late and drove the car in the dark for the first time^[1] to go to the coast guard station at dusk. It was a very small building^[2] by a beach with some areas to park nearby. There were some other cars next to ours with people watching the sunset. I donned our binoculars and began scanning the shore as we stepped onto the beach. No penguins, just waves.

We stuck around as it got chilly and darker, and we realized there was another beach on the other side of the coast guard station, which had a number of shallow rocks and tide pools because the tide was going out. A man wearing a camera with a large, telephoto lens showed up and asked if we had ever seen the penguins before. He mentioned that his tour guide told him this was the area where they usually came ashore in the evenings. We were reinvigorated because he looked seriously ready to see some penguins, so we perservered through the boredom and the cold for another hour or so.

Eventually, scanning the same area became tiring. We were just barely able to hear the chirps of oystercatchers or terns as they walked around or flew over the rocks. It was cold and late, and we couldn't tell if we heard anything nor whether the new shadows that appeared as the tide went out were actually penguins or just more rocks. We resolved to go home and try again later in the trip, but we didn't have high hopes from that night's failed search. To give us more of a guarantee, my partner looked online and was able to book some of the last spots in a viewing tour near Dunedin that said that it would refund you if you saw fewer than four penguins.

It was raining when we arrived in Dunedin. Beyond the Otago Harbour at the edge of downtown, and more specifically beyond the Otakou penninsula, is the open and vast Pacific Ocean^[3], which means two things: prevailing winds and frequent light rain.

From Wikipedia:

Dunedin has relatively low rainfall in comparison to many of New Zealand's cities, with usually only between 600 and 750 millimetres (30 in) recorded per year. However, wet weather is frequent, since much of this rainfall occurs in drizzle or light rain and heavy rain is relatively rare. Dunedin is one of the cloudiest major centres in the country, recording approximately 1,850 hours of bright sunshine per annum.

In summary, you can think of Dunedin as generally having the climate of Seattle. It has a long water-feature connecting the heart of the city to the open ocean, and it has frequent wet weather and clouds. Thankfully, the rainstorm of the day had finished before our tour began. We drove out to the end of the Otago peninsula and arrived at the conservency where the penguin-viewing would happen.

We were given a brief explanation about the penguin's habitat and lifecycle from the wildlife experts. The Little Blue Penguin^[4] is the world's smallest penguin, at a height of up to about a foot when fully grown. Starting at dawn, they swim out to the ocean, and eat small fish and invertebrates all day. At dusk, they arrive back home and usually call out to each other to cooperatively land on shore at similar times to help avoid predators. This was where and when we would get to see them.

The viewing platform was an elevated structure built by the conservancy so that penguins could waddle under it and get to their burrows, and so that tourists like us could safely view them from afar. In the blustery dusk wind facing shore, we stood as the sun set and our guides made hot coffee and tea to drink while we waited. They told us the same thing that the man with the telephoto lens in Kaikōura said: you're more likely to hear them before you see them, due to how hidden they are in the water because of their feathers. Below, you can see video of one group waddling up while another group lands in the background:

When landing, a "raft" of anywhere from a dozen to several dozen penguins will all launch out of the water together and land on the beach, where they'll then waddle up the shore to get to their respective burrows. We were told that seals tend not to eat penguins unless the seal is juvenile. These penguins have such incredibly tiny and dense feathers that seals quickly learn to stay away from such a terrible and dry mouthfeel. Their number main predators tend to be gulls, eagles, seals, orcas, and sharks out at sea. At dusk, the same mustelids and other negative human-related animals I've mentioned before for the nighttime. Thankfully, as part of this conservancy's work, they created an almost entirely predator-free zone for the penguins.

Another reason for landing at night time is that the penguins have poor eyesight that can get even worse in bright light like sun or the flash of cameras. Before being led out to the platform, we were all instructed to test our phones in both camera and video modes to avoid any flash photography. The platform itself had some LED lights that shed constant, diffuse light on the penguins as they made their way to their burrows. According to the guides, these lights had been scientifically tested with this penguin population to see if they'd be less likely to return to their burrows if the light was on near them, and it had no effect on their behavior and was deemed safe. This meant that even after dusk, we were able to take nicely-lit photos of the penguins for about an hour before the lights turned off and we were encouraged back up the stairs to the parking lot.

As the first penguins came in, while everyone else was focused on capturing photos or videos of them as they made landfall or began waddling, I had an area near the side of the platform mostly all to myself when the penguins came waddling past the platform. The walls of the platform were metal railings with thin black nylon strings connecting the railing to the floor. This meant that you could pretty easily get a clear photo of the penguins in between the strings, while still respecting the distances for wildlife safety.

It's hard to get photos of them standing still at all. Even when they're not waddling, the heads are moving, they're preening their feathers, or they're otherwise trying to shake off the water from their recent swim. This was the best and closest photo of any I was able to take.

Over the course of the night, we easily saw about 150 little blue penguins. There were penguins who would happily just chill close to the platform, penguins who would go home to their burrows to tend to their young, penguins who launched themselves onto the shore only to dive back into the ocean again and repeat that process a few times.

As we were leaving, we had to walk up an elevated wooden path and some stairs. Every minute or so of walking, we would stop as the people just ahead of us gently told the penguins who had wound up on the elvated path to keep going and not block the way. We didn't take any pictures since the LED lights were off and we were just walking by the glow of dim red lights, but that was probably actually the closest we got all night. Our guides also recommended to check under your car before leaving, just in case.

I'm so glad that we listened to my friend's suggestion. These penguins were delightful, and as cold as it was out there at the beginning, we were warmed by the adrenaline of seeing the cutest little dudes surf onto the rocks and then waddle up the beach while squawking the whole time. I'd say the entire thing was well worth it, and I'm thankful we found a wildlife center that would allow us the opportunity to safely take photos of them too.

That being said, due to some technical details I get into in the footnotes, I'm also going to include another species as I continue my endemic birds of Aotearoa photos. Here's the red-billed gull, its chick, and its egg, photographed nearby to where I saw the penguins: