Comparative data from three consecutive years show a slight downward trend in numbers of active burrows from the high of 2007 when, out of a total of 585 burrows found, 421 were being used by little penguins.

This year 48 people discovered and examined 529 burrows along the Kingscote foreshore from Brownlow to just past Reeves Point, the same number as 2008. They found that 327 of them were active.

The decline in active burrow counts could be the result of a number of factors, such as the exact timing of the census, but it may signal a downward trend in the population size, as in a number of other colonies across South Australia.

The Coast and Marine team of the KI Natural Resources Management Board is also satellite tracking individual little penguins from both the Kingscote and Penneshaw colonies. With three penguins from Kingscote and two from Penneshaw tracked so far, indications are that penguins from the two colonies have different feeding grounds.

Penneshaw penguins swim out into Backstairs Passage and return the same day after covering 40–50 km. But all the little penguins from Kingscote venture further up into Gulf St Vincent and over into Encounter Bay and stay out for several days or even weeks at a time. This confirms the findings of recent studies which have identified genetic differences between the colonies.