St Kilda Penguins

The home of St Kilda's Little Penguin Colony

The penguin viewing area is now open.

The viewing area was closed at night while the penguins adapted to the return of visitors.

About Us

A colony of approximately 1400 little penguins lives at the breakwater at St Kilda Pier in Melbourne. These little penguins are called Eudyptula Minor.

The public can view these penguins every night of the week, and they have been studied continuously since 1986.

Earthcare St Kilda are a not-for-profit organisation responsible for researching and managing the colony. Find them on Facebook to get updates. They are applying for funding to develop an app that will improve the penguin experience and help protect the penguins. If you would like to help them, all you have to do is vote for the project via the Pick my Project website.

If you want to read a cool story about penguins, read about Australia’s Oldest Man, Who Knitted Jumpers for Penguins.

Southern Australian coastline, home to fairy penguin colonies

About Fairy Penguins in Australia

Long before scientists settled on the name “Little Penguin,” Australians simply called them Fairy Penguins — and the nickname has never really gone away. Eudyptula minor is the smallest penguin species on Earth, and the southern coastline of Australia is one of only two places in the world where it breeds, alongside New Zealand.

SizeAbout 33cm tall and 1–1.5kg — roughly the size of a football
Also calledLittle Penguin, Blue Penguin, Fairy Penguin
Found only inSouthern Australia (WA to NSW) and New Zealand
DietSmall fish, squid and krill caught at sea
LifespanAround 6–7 years in the wild
ColourSlate-blue back, white belly — built-in ocean camouflage

Fairy penguins spend all day fishing far offshore and only come ashore after dark, waddling up the beach in groups called rafts to avoid circling gulls and other predators. On land they nest in burrows dug into dunes, tussock grass or rock crevices — and famous colonies at Phillip Island, Tasmania’s Bicheno, Granite Island in South Australia and Penguin Island in WA now draw visitors from all over the world to watch the nightly parade.

Foxes, off-leash dogs, habitat loss and boat strikes are the biggest threats to these colonies, which is exactly why our own St Kilda breakwater colony is so remarkable: the penguins moved in unaided in the mid-1980s and have been protected and studied ever since, right in the middle of a capital city.

Read the story of our own colony →