The fairy penguin is more the result of a Dreamtime mating between the platypus and the sea perch than a bird on the wrong side of time. Three million years ago, the little blue penguin troupe left the flying trapeze artistes, Archaeopteryx, to return to the sea and become top swimmers and king fishers. They fished the northern beaches a million years before Aborigines settled Broken Bay and, although the fairy penguin population is plentiful around the southern coastline of Australia, only two very small colonies remain in the area; one at Manly Cove and the other on Lion Island.

At Palm Beach, on clear spring mornings, their poodle-like yap is often heard amongst the children in the Corner as the penguins round up the schools of small fish trapped in the sandy shallows. They are the sheep dogs of the seas, working in pairs, well-drilled teams, fishing to feed their fledglings. Certainly, they must be one of nature's most endearing predators.

In autumn, the beginning of the breeding season, they fish alone, each taking a two-day shift to warm their two white eggs on a five-week roster. By the end of each shift, they are hungry and can be seen darting in the shallows of Palm Beach Cove, popping up periodically for a well-earned breather. They spend their entire day fishing and may travel many hundreds of kilometres into the ocean in search of the small fish and krill they catch to feed themselves and their young. They swallow their prey whole, regurgitating it to their expectant nestlings at nightfall when they return to their underground nests.

Bad weather, and other seasonal changes affecting the fairy penguin's natural food supplies, determine the success of their breeding season. In a good season, three clutches of healthy babies can be raised by a pair, but a bad season may produce a crop of weak, young birds, many of which wind up dead on our beaches. The strain of rearing youngsters on the breeding pair's relationship must be enormous, but at the conclusion of the breeding season, evolution rewards them with a long summer break.

Most birds spend their free time alone at sea, away from their burrows and family. The annual reunion of the pair occurs at their burrow between June and August. It is marked by a short, but noisy, male courtship display. At most, the fairy penguin endures six breeding seasons.

The tiny foot-long streamlined body, insulated by a thick layer of fat for warmth and buoyancy, the massive pectoral muscles that propel flipper-like wings to produce turbo-boosted acceleration, and the short, fur-like feathers evolved for waterproofing, have made the fairy penguin's migration from land to sea successful for more than a million years, but today this timid, delightful bird is under threat.

The penguins' decision, taken so long ago, to return to the sea, may end up costing them dearly. These state-of-the-art swim-machines, whose jet streams can drive them to depths of up to sixty metres, become tottering toddlers on dry land, looking more like gawky adolescents than seasoned athletes. For protection, they spend their daylight hours hunting the seas, returning to their underground burrows at nightfall. While crossing open land, however, the timid penguin becomes insecure and vulnerable to human activity, uncontrolled dogs and feral cats. In the context of these threats, the surviving fairy penguin colonies of the northern beaches face an uncertain future.

Copyright © 2002 Rob Marshall, All Rights Reserved.