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Our group paused to allow penguin watchers who had arrived earlier to go down. While standing beside the trail, we looked to our right. Just three feet from our boots was a small fluffy penguin. We could have accidentally stepped on it. The guide turned his red beam on the penguin. “He's waiting for his mother,” he said.

In the weird red light, the young penguin looked like a bowling-ball-sized powder puff. He was hunkered down, lying flat against a sand patch, his thin black beak pointing expectantly toward the sea. Instead of a blue tuxedo, he was wearing a brown-gray down coat. This little penguin had never even been in the water. In a few weeks, the guide told us, he would get his swimming feathers, trading in the coat of down for a slick blue tuxedo—composed of ten thousand waterproof feathers. In his current position, he looked completely defenseless.

“Maybe he should be wearing a sweater,” Chris whispered.

As we continued along the trail, we looked down the slope toward the sea and heard the parent penguins calling huack, huack as they prepared to come ashore. In the weak red light, we saw the dim forms of several foot-tall penguins slowly waddling up the rocky slope. They walked stooped forward slightly, their short flippers hanging by their sides. They reminded us of suburban commuters, straggling off their train after a late trip home and intoning, “What a day.” Two fluffy juveniles came down to meet their parent—we weren't sure if it was the mother or the father— and the adult penguin began to regurgitate fish into their beaks. We detected the scent of anchovies.

Coming out of the sea like this is dangerous for little penguins, which is why they do it under cover of darkness. Onshore predators included sea eagles, Tasmanian devils, and introduced species like dogs and feral cats. “They're really much more comfortable in the water,” said our guide. “Their scientific name is Eudyptula minor, which means good little diver.” In fact, little penguins can spend weeks on the water without coming onto land. Having traded in their wings for flippers, they can “fly” underwater, diving to depths of 150 feet. They can even float while they sleep. And they actually sleep for only around four minutes at a time— they're big on quickie naps called micro-sleeps.

While they face sea predators like sharks and seals, their tuxedos provide ocean camouflage. When seen from above, their blue backs blend in with the color of the sea. When seen from below, their white bellies look like reflections on the water's surface.

For all the human traffic in this rookery, it was a small-time operation compared to other penguin tourism spots in Australia. There are approximately one million little penguins living along the coast and on islands in and around southern Australia and New Zealand, though their numbers have been cut nearly in half due to beachfront development. The biggest “Penguin Parade” is on the northern side of the Bass Strait at Phillip Island, about eighty miles from Melbourne. Phillip Island has five thousand penguins in its rookery and draws half a million tourists every year. The term “Penguin Parade” was even trademarked. That left us wondering what to call the Stanley penguin waddle. We drew up a short list of possibilities. Penguin Promenade. Penguin Perambulation. Penguin Pilgrimage. Penguin Pomp and Circumstance. Penguin Posse. Fairy Brigade. Fishy Feast of the Fairies.

None of them had the same ring.

“How about dinner bell for puss-'ems?” Alexis offered.

We began to feel that Alexis's position on penguins was parochial.

Up ahead, the guide had stopped and everyone in our group bunched up around him. He was shining his red beam onto the trail just ahead. A mother penguin had plopped herself down in the middle of the trail. She looked exhausted. In fact, she was probably taking a micro-snooze. “She's done in,” the guide said. “We'll have to turn round.”

“Can't we move her?” one of the tour participants asked.

The guide was shocked. “This is their place,