St. Kilda Beach

This guide to St Kilda Beach in Melbourne follows the little penguins that colonized an artificial rock breakwater built in the 1950s, and the volunteer count that a biologist and a local began one night in 1986. It traces how that first tally launched one of the country's longest-running wildlife studies, still logging every bird decades on. Come at dusk and watch the rocks for the first shapes hauling out of the water.