Searching for Kororā: Wellington’s Elusive Little Blue Penguin

I wrote this in 2016 or 2017 during the two years I lived in New Zealand. Some details — prices, hours, what’s open — may have changed, but the experience and my love for this place haven’t.

We were driving around the coast south of Wellington last week, looking for a restaurant called The Bach Café that a friend recommended, when we noticed signs posted telling drivers to slow down for penguins.

I hadn’t realized there were penguins on the North Island! Unfortunately we found The Bach but it was closing as we pulled in, so we went penguin searching instead. An awesome drive around the coast but no luck. At lunch the next day I told my colleagues about our quest and they laughed and called me a crazy (American) tourist — they had lived in Wellington for years and had never seen a penguin. But one colleague said she sees them very often and you just have to know where to look. She suggested we try the Miramar Peninsula.

So of course that evening we were off again. The penguins we were searching for are Little Blue penguins — kororā in Māori — and they are the world’s smallest penguin, reaching just over 30cm tall and weighing about 1kg. The Miramar Peninsula is one of the few places where they live close to people, which sounds charming until you learn that they are a bit noisy, have smelly nests, and like to mate underneath people’s houses. Apparently not everyone is delighted to have them as neighbors.

What makes our failed search a little more understandable — and a little more sobering — is that the kororā population has declined by 60-70% on the mainland since the 1960s. Their New Zealand population is now estimated at somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 birds, classified as “at risk — declining.” Dogs, cats, coastal development, and cars on coastal roads have all taken a toll. So spotting one in the wild near a city is genuinely not easy.

The other thing working against us? Timing. Little Blue penguins spend their days out at sea feeding and only return to land after dusk. We were out there in the late afternoon like amateurs.

But we had no luck again. I think it will be my personal mission now to find a penguin on the North Island — we’re off to the South Island over Christmas and there are penguin tours in Dunedin, so we’ll try there too. One way or another, the kororā and I are going to meet.