{"id":148,"date":"2006-02-13T13:23:09","date_gmt":"2006-02-13T20:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2006-02-13T13:53:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-13T20:53:00","slug":"penguin-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/13\/penguin-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguin Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"

When A.J. and I were in Australia, we spent about a week on a road trip.  We drove from Brisbane to Melbourne along the coast, which was fun and beautiful and a little adrenaline-inducing at times (like when I would sometimes turn onto the wrong side of the road…).  One of the coolest parts of the road trip was actually a bit of an add-on since we had to go out of our way to get there, and it was totally worth it: the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island.<\/a><\/p>\n

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As you can see, Phillip Island is pretty far south, and the Penguin Parade is on the very eastern-most part of the island.  And when you are there and you look out across the ocean, then is nothing between you and Antarctica.  How cool.<\/p>\n

When we first arrived, we paid our admission and went to find a spot down on the beach.  See, these Little Penguins (aka "Fairy Penguins") head out into the ocean each day to hunt for food.  Each night at sunset they come up out of the ocean and waddle across the beach to their sand dune burrows.  So we gathered on the beach and waited with the rest of the tourists to watch this natural wildlife attraction. And waited.  And shivered a little.  And waited some more.  Then we heard some people exclaiming and pointing and we strained our eyes down the beach and could just make out some movements – nothing too spectacular.  But then we saw a group of penguins a little closer to us getting ready to come up out of the waves.  They like to cross the beach in groups because they have an natural instinct to fear being plucked up by birds of prey.  They float together in the water until they sense it is just the right moment, then they run (waddle) as fast as they can across the beach and into the sand dunes.  The very best part of the whole process is that they have a bit of a hard time getting out of the ocean, what with the waves and all, and so they often get knocked over or pulled back out in the undertow.  It’s entertaining and very cute, and eventually they get past it (so you don’t have to feel too sorry for them).  After a little bit of watching, we decided we’d had our experience and were ready to leave.<\/p>\n

And that’s when the best part of the whole night began.  See, as you walk down to the beach from the visitor’s center, you walk on an elevated boardwalk (so as not to disrupt the natual habitat).  As we walked up the boardwalk back to the visitor’s center, we realized that many Little Penguins were walking alongside us – heading up to their burrows.  They were really close, and sometimes they would stand still and look at you, and sometimes they would waddle their way up the hill next to you.  They really were little, too – only about 33cm tall (so says the guidebook).  I was mesmerized.  Unfortunately, they don’t let you take pictures there… but here are some that I found:<\/p>\n

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Completely enthralling.  Almost as much as when I see baby koalas.  It really was a great part of our road trip and I am so so glad we went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When A.J. and I were in Australia, we spent about a week on a road trip.  We drove from Brisbane to Melbourne along the coast, which was fun and beautiful and a little adrenaline-inducing at times (like when I would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jillcook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}