Elizabeth the Penguin

Elizabeth, or Liz for short, is a little penguin who lives at Granite Island.  Little penguins Eudyptula minor are the smallest penguin species in the world and their colonies are found around the coastlines of New Zealand and across Southern Australia from Manly (Sydney), down to Tasmania and around to Perth. Little penguin colonies are generally only found on islands where feral predators, such as dogs, cats, rats and foxes cannot reach them.  They are excellent swimmers, built for speed and they spend most of their time at sea.

Liz and her friends at Granite Island head out to sea most days at dawn, fishing towards Cape Jarvis and sometimes towards the Coorong, usually travelling about 10-20 km away.  They feed on small baitfish, of which anchovies are their favourite meal.  After a good day’s fishing they return to the colony at dusk to spend the night socialising on land or feeding hungry chicks.  Getting ashore, however, can be tricky.  Sometimes fur seals lurk around the shore looking for a tasty penguin snack, so the best way of getting ashore is en mass, or all together.  Liz and her friends contact each other with short quacks or contact calls (known as hucking).  This ensures that everyone knows where to meet in a raft, a few hundred meters from shore.  When everyone has gathered and the sunlight has almost gone, the penguins all porpoise to the rocky beach, where they scramble up the rocks in a flurry of splashing flippers and feet. 

Liz has had a few clutches of chicks in her lifetime.  She will probably live to about 7 or 8 but if she is lucky she may reach 15 years.  She normally has 2 chicks each year during winter, and occasionally when food is abundant she will have a second clutch later in the year (around September).  This differs from her cousins in the eastern parts of Australia where they breed during early summer.

Unlike other flying seabirds that have large feathers, which can fall out and be replaced whenever they get tattered, little penguins have to moult all their feathers in one go.  This means they have to sit on land for two weeks to lose all their old feathers and grow new ones. Before the 2-week fasting period of the moult, little penguins spend a lot more time at sea feeding up and getting quite fat.  Liz really doesn’t enjoy this time because she gets quite hungry, very bored and extremely grumpy and itchy.  Infact, it is made worse by the fact that everyone moults around the same time, so the atmosphere in the colony is not the best as everyone bickers and grumbles at each other.  Finally, their shiny blue and white coats are complete and they can head out to sea to preen in the shallows before embarking on a long fishing trip to fill their starving bellies.

Some little penguin colonies have been in decline in recent years including Granite Island.  With the help of Liz and her friends, researchers are trying to establish the reasons behind these declines, so that managers can ensure that these colonies do not disappear.