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Photo: Robert Dockerill | The Little Penguin, also known as the Fairy Penguin or Blue Penguin, is the smallest of the 18 penguin species and the only penguin to breed in Australia. Despite being only 33 cm tall, the Little Penguin is adventurous and a young bird can travel distances of over 1000km in the first year of its life.
The Little Penguin cannot fly in the air but has been said to ‘fly’ through the water. It uses its small wings or flippers to glide through the water at speeds of up to 6 km per hour.
The Little Penguin is covered in short stiff feathers, almost like scales, which are a blue-grey colour on their back and white on its belly. This type of colouring is called ‘countershading’ and camouflages the penguin while in the water - from above it blends with the surface colour of the water, while from below it blends with the light entering from above.
A layer of down feathers insulate the Little Penguin from the cold. Its small legs are low on the body so they can be used as a rudder in the water or to walk upright on land where it waddles awkwardly. The Little Penguin has webbed feet and long toenails. It communicates with high pitched yapping ‘barks’ and becomes quite noisy when it leaves the water to roost or during fishing.
The breeding season of the Little Penguin is between July and March and varies annually. Egg laying starts in July and generally two eggs are laid in a burrow. The eggs are incubated for around seven weeks, with the parents taking shifts of up to 10 days at a time while their partner feeds at sea. A Little Penguin may raise two clutches of young in a season. The newborn chick is covered in fluffy grey down and parents take it in turns to stand guard or catch food for it. Once the chick is a little older both parents feed at sea during the day and leave the chick to fend for itself until they return. The young take to the sea at about eight weeks old.
The Little Penguin has a life expectancy of around 6½ years, but some survive for over 20 years. Every year the Little Penguin fattens up and then retreats to its burrow to moult. It takes about two weeks to moult its old feathers and grow new ones. It cannot feed in the sea during this moulting phase.
Little Penguins live along the coast of southern Australia, including Tasmania and New Zealand. Major colonies occur on islands, sometimes with 40,000 Little Penguins on one island. Although needing the shore to roost each evening, the Little Penguin may travel 20km off shore to feed. It is the only penguin to wait until after dark to come ashore and form groups before waddling across the sand dunes to roost in rock crevices or burrows lined with plant matter.
The Little Penguin eats mainly fish and squid, sometimes diving deeper than 40 m to catch its food. Chicks are fed fish and squid which are swallowed whole at sea by the parent and then regurgitated straight into the chick’s mouth!Ashore, the Little Penguin is vulnerable to attack by foxes, dogs and cats, whereas in the water it is on the menu for sharks, fur seals and sea lions. By keeping in groups the Little Penguin lessens the threat from predators.
Human habitation has also seriously threatened the Little Penguin. As well as predation by domestic animals, human development intruding on breeding grounds has resulted in population decline or total disappearance. This impacts heavily on local populations as a Little Penguin returns to the same burrow to breed each year and may fail to breed if the breeding ground is disturbed.
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