How to get up close and personal with Little Blue Penguins

We’d just literally reached the wooden boardwalk a short distance from the sea and there they were. A gang of Little Blue penguins had just crash landed onto the rocky shoreline and were clumsily finding their flippers to steady themselves against the tide that continued to pound the beach beneath them.

 We had been told that the penguins arrived back in ‘rafts’ together as this meant safety in numbers. After a day spent fishing out at sea these tough little guys meet up a short distance from shore and with as many as possible in a group form what is known as a ‘raft’ to make their way to land. They then waddle unsteadily back to their nests which are found in the long grasses and burrowed earth of the coastline. They’ve also been very well helped out here at Pilot’s Beach as some nice friends of the human kind have put out boxes at various intervals to enable to the penguins to nest and claim one as their new home, they seem to have taken them to – well a duck to water, to excuse the pun.

The world’s smallest penguins arriving together in a ‘raft’ at Pilots Beach, Otago Peninsula

 Nightly tours are undertaken here at Pilots Beach at the end of the remote and rugged Otago Peninsula. The tours start at the Albatross information centre and checking times is a must as they change nightly depending on when it is expected to get dark. We only just made it down in time to spot the first arrivals! 

Getting so close to the penguins arriving home is such an honour

Next part coming in the next few days…..