The Weather Notebook: Little Blues

Little Blues
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If it quacks like this...

(Sound of bird)

Is blue-ish and about 2 pencils-lengths long, tips the scales at two pounds, and lives in 60 degree weather, is it at all possible it's a penguin?

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. And the answer is???? Lets check in with correspondent Amy Mayer to find out the answer.

Little-Blue Penguin
Yes. It's true these are not the penguins of storybooks. But they use their flightless wings as flippers in the water, they waddle on stubby legs on the beach and they nest in the rocks and dunes on the shore. Fairy penguins are the smallest species and I met them on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

CW: They're landing on the rocks here.

Clayton Wilson guides my group on a night-time penguin walk.

CW: There's a penguin there as well.

It's early January, the peak of summer, but the temperature is a cool 60 degrees. It can be 90 here during the day. In winter, the low temperature is only in the 50s. Not exactly what you think of as penguin habitat.

(Penguin Calls)

I don't know what other penguins sound like, but this song is jarring. They call for courtship, or when they get irritated ‹ as happened when one excited tourist accidentally took a flash photograph. White light bothers the penguins, so just a few soft, diffuse lights illuminate the boardwalk we're on. In the shadowy glow we suddenly notice two penguins padding their way UNDER our feet. I crouch down and dangle my microphone from the boardwalk. They walk right by.

Short, squat and sleek, the shiny bodies disappear in the darkness.