In front of the Penguins.

Smaller divers fins very large: the smallest penguins in the world can tourists Phillip Iceland in Australia first hand. With night vision devices and headphones, they go on the evening game - and experience the Gewatschel and cackle of an animal Feierabend traffic.

 

The flaming red sunset burns. On a beach cordoned ten nature lovers sit in the sand, salty sea air to breathe and wait. Lange nothing happens. Eventually, though, it dawns already discolored the calm before rolling down the ocean in some places dark and promises finally moving. But so great is not actually a penguin, and certainly not a dwarf penguin. It knows even the layman.

It is also not just a penguin, they are each equal to a few dozen of those who after a long day on the high seas back beach strive gen. The participants in this erwartungsfrohen penguin private audience quite incredulous stare over the water and slowly realize that, just a fairly unique tryst with nature underway.

At Phillip Iceland, a good 90 minutes drive south of Melbourne located, there are koalas, seals, once a year to run the motorcycle world championship - and the penguins. Every year some 500,000 visitors alone to attract more than 33 centimeters wide dress makers in the Iceland Nature Park Phillip Most tourists are content with the "Penguin Parade" standard program dubbed 1988 the Visitor Center. Without large crowds, it is not: hundreds, sometimes thousands of onlookers sitting on large stands on the beach and wait, often vociferously, at the stars of the evening. A spectacle in the mass operation - not necessarily for everyone.

Quite different from the Ultimate Tour: For the group with a maximum of ten participants is a private, somewhat secluded beach reserved. Equipped as it is an expedition after a brief introductory lecture going on. Each of the new penguin friends get night vision device, headphones, rain gear and a flashlight, then it will go in the car to the beach two kilometers away.

The manager on duty

"I accept this job sometimes, to see whether at the front all the penguin's best course is," says Mark Mankeit his middle in the rear of the car together broken passengers. The current driver of the group is the main business leaders Phillip Iceland Nature Park. That he shall proceed promptly, makes him less sympathetic.

AUSTRALIA-QUIZ

AP; Australian Tourist Commission; DPA

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On the beach arrived, took Richard Dakin, the Ranger Regiment. He now communicates through the headphones and his guests, says a lot about penguins and their life habits and warns on the way back, none of the animals to trample to death: "You must watch the little guys are everywhere." The audience trot behind the geese march through deep sand is a sand dune on the dry run of a brook. Best views of the ocean included.

So today was ordered as it tours to the not always the case. Already in the twenties began enterprising islanders to make their guests from Melbourne and other regions of Australia to show the penguins. After the island of 1940 by a bridge to the mainland had been adopted the penguin-tourism increasingly damaging proportions.

The burrows of the animals were destroyed, their habitat restricted. Their numbers fell steadily back. From the sixties grew to recognize the halt. Fences and observation platforms have been built, the authorities later decided to Summerland Peninsula in the southwest of Phillip Iceland more or less completely the Penguins to leave.

The government of Victoria has started a conservation program, which the inhabitants of the previously densely populated corner of their homes henceforth only to the state could sell the property renaturalisierte. Since growing penguin population at Phillip Iceland again slowly. Today, on the Summerland Peninsula only a handful of cottages, the driveway is in the dark to protect the nocturnal animals prohibited. Since 1968, there is an intensive research program on Eudyptula minor, such as the dwarf penguin in Latin means.

Together heavily

"The penguins always return in larger groups in the country back. This protects them better against attacks by foxes or birds of prey," growls Ranger Richards voice from the headphones. This explains the direction of the beach moving dark spots on the water. Suddenly there is light in dämmrigen the first penguin head out of the floods.

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But only one of the birds makes it ashore, his cousins are back from a wave washed into the sea. A dangerous situation for the small diving fins, but after a hard day to fish, he seems to quick in its construction and want to waddles off alone in the twilight. "This is rare," says the ranger. "Normally they do not trust alone on the beach and tend to revert back to their group as they dare go it alone."

The next dwarf penguins actually wait until small groups. With up to two dozen fellow waddle and they fluctuate the 30-meter sand back into their colony. The straight yet so quiet and almost lifeless lying beach turns into the equivalent of the penguin Feierabendverkehr: dwarf penguins everywhere in small or larger teams.

On slower cousins solidarity waited so much time must be. The fact that in the dune while leaning observers practically in front of the home hateful sit, do not disturb this. Some waddle calmly even closer than two meters to the watchers and start over, arrived in the marital home, as soon as possible with a loud croaking and chatter. With the rest on the beach, it is now definitively over.

After the darkness is now completely caught may Ranger Richard and his group in the moonlight with the naked eye, only the dwarf penguins see their home directly to their passenger. Now come the night vision devices are used. Like soldiers on the effect of nocturnal Spähtour human visitors - who are the animals in the Green-Schwarz observed, but now feels like an intruder in the realm of natural wonders.