Not far from Melbourne, there is an island where a nightly parade of little fairy penguins takes place. There is a big colony of fairy penguins on Summerland Beach near the western end of Phillip Island. The penguins go out to the sea in the day to hunt for fish, and every evening when the sun goes down, the penguins return to the shore where they nest in burrows in the ground. Wet and weary, they hang out in the water and arranged themselves in little groups(called 'rafts') of around ten penguins each, while mustering sufficient courage to come ashore. Once a 'raft' of penguins has sufficient courage to come ashore, the penguins will make a dash in a single file to the shore and head towards their burrows. It is a very organized dash(almost comical) and the penguins maintain an approximate single file until they are very close to the burrows rather than running helter skelter. Nobody knows how the lead penguin was chosen(probably drew the short straw) or why they do not come to shore all at once rather than in 'rafts'. This process goes on for about an hour by which time most of the penguins will be in their burrows. Coming to shore in the darkness probably affords them protection against predators such as sea eagles.

The fairy penguins
Weighing only one kilogram each and at a height of 30 cm, the fairy penguins are the smallest penguin speciess in the world. They are nowadays known as Little penguins. For more educational stuff about their natural habits, try this link: http://www.penguins.org.au/index.html

Getting there from Melbourne
Melbourne to Phillip Island is about one and a half hours away by road. The island is connected to the rest of Australia by a bridge at San Remo. Coach tours from Melbourne to Phillip Island are easily available. The tour normally covers other places such as sheep farms, koala reserves and whatnots and will reach the Penguin Parade just before sunset. The coach returns to Melbourne around midnight.

At the Penguin Reserve
Admission to the Penguin Parade is around A$10(can't remember the exact amount). The Penguin Reserve is public land but is self-funding; so admissions, souvenir and food sales and donations are needed to manage the Penguin Parade and Reserve to protect penguins and maintain facilities. A wooden boardwalk and viewing stand have been built so as to allow visitors to view the penguins. Rangers are on hand to prevent people from wandering onto the beach and mixing with the penguins. Orange lights are used on boardwalks because penguins are less sensitive to orange lights.

Flash photography is not allowed as this would hurt the eyes of the penguins.( I used a manual camera, opened up the aperture really big and slowed down the shutter speed. Didn't use a tripod and my hands shook a bit. Urgggggh! ). Every few minutes or so, the loudspeakers would blare out to visitors not to use flash cameras in English, Japanese, Mandarin and in other languages as well. The rangers get really pissed whenever someone uses a flash despite the announcements. It is still possible to get near a penguin though. Many penguins build their nests just beside the boardwalk and some of them would loiter outside their burrows for a while, and so it is possible to photograph them while standing on the boardwalk just a few feet away. If you are lucky, an orange light nearby will cast just sufficient light for you to get off a good shot.

This picture was taken under the orange lights at the Penguin Reserve at night. As you can see, the photo does look orangy without a filter. This raft had a bit of a leadership problem. The lead penguin lost its bearings and wandered off on a tangent. The rest of the penguins stopped, huddled together for a while, and dashed off in a different direction towards their nests, all too willing to junk bad leadership.

It can be cold at Phillip Island and a really thick jacket will be required. I saw a guy who went there in a T-shirt(probably because it was a warm day in Melbourne), and while the rest of us were watching penguins, he was in the rangers' building trying to keep warm! Me? I was wearing jeans and a sweater inside a ski jacket. Didn't bring gloves so I had to keep my hands inside my jacket pockets most of the time.