March of the Penguins

Thurs. evening - From the Great Ocean Road, we traveled through Melbourne and on to Phillip Island.

A very unusual phenomenon takes place on Phillip Island every night: penguins emerge from the water, march up onto and across the beach, and find their way to their burrows where they nestle down for the night. The reason they leave the ocean at night is that predators such as sharks invade, seeking food, and the penguins choose not to become shark snacks. There are 17 different species of penguins, we learned, and the ones on Phillip Island are called "Little Penguins", and true to their species name, they are little - no more than 35 cm (about 14 inches) in height.

We took our seats in the viewing area and shortly after, we began to watch the "Penguin Parade". They came out of the water in groups - sometimes 15 or 20, other times 75 or 100 at a time. They huddled closely together as they made their way across the beach and then climbed up a sand dune. They hesitated at the top of the sand dune, as if they were not sure how to proceed. Then they would take a tentative step or two to descend the other side of the sand dune. At that point, some of them would surrender to gravity and start running down the dune, while others were conquered by gravity, and fell and slid down the sand dune. Unbelievably cute! Then they waddled down a path, seeking out their particular burrows. We left the seated viewing area to follow them along their path. We walked on a boardwalk that was elevated 2 to 3 feet above the penguins, and walked alongside them. Some of them stopped along the way to bed down for the night, while others just kept walking and walking, or more accurately, waddling and waddling. We learned that they sometimes will go as far as 2 km (about 1.2 miles) down the path. In fact, we were told to check under our car in the parking lot before leaving, in case some penguins made it that far. Observing the migratory march of the Little Penguins was so fun and amusing; it was a great way to end a long day.