By Julie

You’ll find the fairy penguin, or little blue penguin, making a splash in the sub-Antarctic regions south of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Living up to their name, these compact penguins are only 16 to 17 inches tall and weigh but two pounds! They are the smallest penguins. Fairy penguins have indigo-blue and slate-gray backs, heads, and flippers. Their bellies and chests are white. They have tiny heads with two pinprick earholes and bigger bodies. Their torpedolike shape helps them swim through the water rapidly. These penguins are excelent swimmers. Their scientific name, Eudyptula, means ‘good little diver’ in Greek! They spend most of the day at sea snagging small fish, miniature squid and octopi, and tiny crustaceans. They forage for food in groups called “rafts”. They return to their nests, burrows or rock crevices lined with plant material, at the end of the day. Did you know that fairy penguins reuse the same nest every year? They usually live for about seven years. They have a population of 500,000 pairs, or 1,000,000 birds! My last interesting fact about these penguins is their wide sound range: they can bark, bleat, bray, cackle, growl, hiss, quack, scream, sneeze, trumpet, and even moo and meow! As you can clearly see, these itsy-bitsy penguins are definently small but mighty!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.