By David Bristow, the Story Teller

When the penguins moved in around 30 years ago the locals of Simons Town wanted them to be evicted. The din they make when all gathered in the evening can sound like 1,000 donkeys being stabbed with sharp sticks. So why has Boulders Beach, home to several thousand refugee African penguins, become one of Cape Town's top five tourist attractions?

Okay, so they are endearing little things, all short-legged and in black-tie, waddling up and down the beach like avian Charlie Chaplins. They can dive to 130 metres (350 feet) and their well oiled feathers act like biological wetsuits keeping them warm in sub-freezing water: under a microscope you could see how they zip together like biological Velcro, and they are well oiled from a gland at the base of their tails.

"Imagine penguins and sea leopards outlasting the whole works. Well, probably they deserve to. Especially penguins. I don't think they ever hurt anybody."

William Brinkley, The Last Ship

But, being flightless birds, they usually avoid nesting on mainlands where they are helpless against land predators. So why do they nest and breed – rather successfully – at Boulders, which is very much part of the African mainland?

The main reason is that they need to dig nests to protect their eggs from predating by other seabirds, as well as the fierce African sun which can reach boiling temperatures in mid-summer. In times past the granite islands off the southwest coast of Africa were covered in deep coatings of guano (bird poop), into which they dug their nests. During the 18th and 19th centuries those islands were stripped of the guano to make gunpowder and fertiliser and the penguins were in poop of a different kind.

At Boulders in Simons Town, and two other places on the South African coast, they have found save havens where they can dig their nests into the soft beach sand and sea-facing dunes, where land predators cannot get at them. It is true there are a few mongooses in the area but otherwise they are surrounded mostly by holiday homes where there are no pets.

Numbers of African penguins have plummeted over the past two centuries, because not only were their homes removed, but their eggs were collected and they were boiled for food right up to the end of the era of sailing ships, and in fact slavery. Slavers did not want to spend good money of food to feed slaves so they simply collected whatever they could on the islands they passes – like flightless birds and nesting turtles, and their eggs. Today the African penguin is a highly endangered species.