Little blue beanie

During the Australian Open tennis, the Melbourne tourist board is running a TV ad that features a quick glimpse of penguins scurrying across a beach. It goes by so quickly that it took two or three times before I realized what I was seeing. If you blink, or if you’ve never been to the penguin parade on Phillip Island, you’d probably think it was a bunch of mice running across your screen. But they are penguins, little blue penguins to be precise, or fairy penguins as they are also known, the smallest of the 20 or so varieties of penguins on the planet. They live along the south coast of Australia and build their nests in the sand on shore. Some will even burrow under your porch and set up housekeeping there. During the day the parents head out to sea to find food, and at night they come back to their burrows and their hungry chicks.

You can see the penguin parade via a daylong bus tour from Melbourne. After sunset small groups of penguins ride the waves to shore, then run across a floodlit stretch of beach before their predators see them. After watching a hundred or so penguins come ashore, you walk back from the grandstand area to the visitor’s center, stopping to watch them as they head through the brush to their nests, all the while squawking back and forth with their hungry chicks. It is a sight and a sound unlike anything you’ll see or hear anywhere else.

Back at the visitor’s center there are exhibits and information about the little blues and other wildlife on the island, such as the wallabies. There is also one enormous gift shop with just about anything you can imagine with a penguin on it or in it or shaped like a penguin. Ever since I officially became a penguin ornament collector, I’ve had to swear off other penguin items (with occasional lapses), otherwise I would have been broke after a visit to the penguin parade gift shop and I never would have made it through customs. Oddly, in the entire store, with less than 30 shopping days left until Christmas, I couldn’t find a single penguin ornament. Instead I got this little blue beanie, which has a magnet in its right wing, I suppose to hang on a refrigerator. I could turn it into a legitimate tree ornament by sewing a hanging loop onto its head, like the ones on my Ty beanies, but for now I just stick a wire tree hanger, gently, into its neck and hang him on the tree.

Little blue beanie

Acquired: November 21, 2004, Phillip Island Penguin Parade gift shop, Australia

Number: 252

Size: 4.5 inches tall

Price: 3.95 $AUS