Beach combing, we rouse a refugee.
An adolescent fairy penguin
washed up, sated and sleepy.
His still-wet plumage
is peaked into product-tousled tufts.
He sags with exhaustion,
small white belly pudding-bowl-distended,
grey-black beak surprisingly sharp-looking. 
Midnight blue highlighted with iceberg-turquoise, oh,
but he is breathtakingly beautiful.
The sun glares down, surgical-invasive.
At least 200,000 lux -
shadow-reduction is absolute
both drowsy-inducing and possibly deadly.
He certainly looks half-anaesthetised
and though he seems comfortable enough
we did pass an inquisitive -
possibly acquisitive mongrel pup, fifty yards back.
We need to relocate him.
We swim in the hot air above, peering down as god-like
as neurosurgeons
but when hands swoop down
to scoop
silvery pale irises startle open
and fishtweezer beak flashes defensive. Yikes!
Particularly disconcerting
as he slumps back immediately into drunken, gnome-pose.
'Use your t-shirt,' I suggest, 'throw it over him.'
This method worked reasonably well
on a car-struck koala I bundled up once.
The suspicious little fellow's head swivels round 180,
yet still, he is leerily bagged and bustled dunewards.
There, beneath a comb-over of Marram grass, 
he is left to harbour safe
while we continue to comb onwards
careful to obliterate giveaway tracks.

http://www.sydneystudytours.com/pics/firypenguin.jpg