Shelly Beach

This guide to Shelly Beach in Sydney opens on a winter night in 2015, when a fox slipped along the shoreline and into the burrows of Australia's only mainland little penguin colony. It traces the colony's decades-long decline, from hundreds of breeding pairs down to about thirty-five by the 1990s, worn down by fishing lines, boat propellers and hungry pets. You'll hear how rangers and volunteers responded after that night, with infrared cameras, baited traps and patrols along the dunes. Listen at dusk between May and February, when a hoarse, braying call might drift up from the rocks.