Penguin Patrol
Today we went to Boulders Beach to watch African penguins. As we got onto the beach dad spotted the first penguins. They were tiny little things. They were the size of an adult male’s thigh. One of the three was pregnant and the other two almost never stopped squirming about. After a time the penguin watching crew had enlarged to about fifteen people. The penguins had just retreated to the ocean, so we thought that the crowd increase had disturbed them. Now it was time to go to the penguin reserve 200ft down the beach.
We spotted a penguin the instant we stepped onto the boardwalk. The penguin was small, grey and fuzzy. It was a baby penguin. We turned our head and on a huge rock we saw about twenty penguins lying out in the sun. The rock was serving as a sort of tanning bed for the penguins, except their feathers weren’t getting any darker.
As we continued down the boardwalk, we saw some particularly lazy penguins. Then we came across a penguin nest with two penguins inside. The penguins were lying head to toe and it was the cutest thing. When we reached the end of the walk we saw a penguin standing on a rock with its fins out. But that’s not all – the penguin was yawning.
After coming off the beach we went into the Boulders Beach penguin fact room where we learned some stuff about African penguins. Did you know that penguin parents take turns protecting the baby and eating? Did you know that if there are two babies the youngest one almost always dies? Did you know that if there are two babies the younger one is smaller and almost always dies of starvation because big brother or sister gets all the food first? These are all true facts we learned while in the Boulders Beach fact room.
Tags: Boulders, Cape Town, Kids, Penguins, South Africa, Travel
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Do the African penguins migrate or do they stay there all year? Were they loose so you could walk among them? Do they smell? What kind of sound do penguins make?
You’re going to enjoy the new movie “March of the Penguins.”