The tiny ones come out after dark

So that's them. Oamaru's Little Blue Penguins. I know they're hard to see...they're that much harder to photograph. This is my best shot after 5 nights of visits. Little Blues come in from the sea just as the very last light of the day is fading. They gather together out in the water just off the shore and then make a big move for land, so where once there were no penguins, there are suddenly many, all clambering up (and sometimes tripping and tumbling back down) the rocks. Let me state the obvious: they. are. adorable. Once they make it up to the colony (this particular one is right on the historic waterfront and has man-made penguin houses that they've been persuaded to nest in), there they sit together, preening, flapping their flippers, squealing, and occasionally nuzzling. Last night was the first night I saw still-downy chicks emerge from the nest boxes, venturing cautiously into the open until they spotted mum, whom they proceeded to voraciously bite, peck, and drag around in a desperate "for God sakes FEED ME" type effort. Talk about coming home to a crazy house.

It's interesting, having been here 5 nights now, to see the differences in the penguin colonies from day to day. Not only do the penguins behave differently--coming ashore at different times, interacting less or more with each other and with the people watching--but the human spectators do as well.

The first night at the Blue Penguins was a circus, with lots of kids running about restlessly and shouting as their parents rattled off hundreds of pictures with their ginormous cameras, some of them with flash mechanisms they couldn't (or wouldn't) disable, despite the prominent signs requesting otherwise for the sake of the penguins. That first night was really difficult for me and I had to leave sooner than I wanted because the others' detachment from the birds as vulnerable wildlife was too much to take.

Yet the second night was the opposite; everyone was very careful to be quiet and to move slowly and hardly anyone even took pictures. It was a quiet evening of like minds in reverence of the little penguins.

Night 3 came the local teenagers, who took endless flash photos with their iPhones and laughed about how the penguins must surely be blind by now from all the pictures they took.

Night 4, the penguins came in later than usual, when it was too dark to even get a picture like mine above. Lots of people arrived to see the penguins, but this night there was a guilt in the air that made people refrain from resorting to their flash, unlike visitors from the previous nights, and so when they realized they could not get that awesome picture, they left, often without even pausing to notice the penguins themselves.

Tonight, I had stayed longer at the Yellow-Eyed Penguin colony to have the place to myself for about an hour (most everyone leaves the Yellows early to see the Blues come ashore) so I didn't arrive at the Blues until it was almost fully dark. By then, everyone had left, and there I was, alone with the penguins, who were sitting and preening and accosting mum just a meter away from where I sat on the rocks. It was by far the best night I've had with them, alone with the birds and my own thoughts and feelings for hours.

I did observe something this night that I hadn't seen before, I think because I hadn't stayed that late. As I sat in the shadows of the rocks lining the wharf, periodically one or two people would arrive at the colony, unaware of me and thinking they were alone. After looking around they'd lower their cameras in front of the penguins and flash them in the face about five times, and then almost immediately leave. They never paused to watch them.

When a penguin gets flashed like that in the dark, they sometimes shut their eyes and shake their heads in bewilderment. They raise their flippers up behind them, an indication they are distressed. Signs that say "treat penguins with respect" are everywhere. Yet there's this dark place in people that feels compelled in the apparent absence of consequences to take what they want from the penguin, a trophy they can put on Facebook or their smartphone display, or simply forget about the next day. But to the penguins it's more than that, it's chemically stressful and ultimately alters their lives and the overall health in the population. It has been shown that those penguin colonies with the most visitors and least interpretative/protective presence have the lowest nesting success rates.

When you watch them, it's really hard not to want to capture and keep the incredibly adorable and novel things you're seeing. That dark place is in me as well--I think sometimes, "just one picture..."--but after my first couple years as a teenage birdwatcher, when I did sometimes potentially compromise the bird's wellbeing for the sake of the picture, I'm not able to give in to those impulses anymore.

I can't decide how to feel about it. Watching from the shadows as people came up and flashed them, I felt a surge of adrenaline run through me. I'd think, you should go say something...no, you can't change them...they'll keep doing it...it'll keep happening here, night after night after night, no matter what you do. And then I'd begin to cry, and feel just so hopeless. And then I'd turn back to the little penguin at my feet who had waddled up to inspect me and whose head was cocked in scrutiny, and I'd just look at it, looking at me. And that's all I could--or wanted--to do.

I think I love wild animals more than anything. I have thousands of words for what that means in my life, but at times it all boils down to sitting in still silence with the penguin at my feet.