There’s a new place in town to catch penguin action year round!

Penguin Point is a brand-new $1.7 million African penguin exhibit that immerses visitors in the sights and sounds of a real penguin colony. This spacious open-air exhibit gives Aviary guests a 360-degree perspective of African penguins doing what penguins do best — waddling, squabbling, scaling rocks and torpedoing their way through the water.

The birds’ aquatic antics are on view through an acrylic-fronted pool and through the wheelchair accessible Kids ViewTube under the exhibit. There guests find themselves in the swim, with underwater views of the penguins as they “fly” through the pool. Domed bubbles allow children to pop up in the midst of the exhibit’s noisy residents. (African penguins are also known as “jackass penguins” because of their honking, braying call.) Heated nest cubbies — also visible to visitors — will provide a cozy place for the birds to congregate during cold winter days.

Stanley, Simon, Patrick, Elvis and Sidney, the National Aviary’s current penguin residents, have been joined by six new penguin recruits. In time, the National Aviary hopes to breed select members of the group as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) African Penguin Species Survival Plan, a carefully monitored breeding program that seeks to preserve healthy, genetically diverse populations of African penguins. If breeding is successful, guests will have the opportunity to peek inside the nesting cubbies to watch the eggs hatch and the chicks develop.

Penguin Point is the first of 10 new exhibits being planned as part of a $23 million of the National Aviary. The expansion will include the Helen M. Schmidt FliteZone™ theater for year-round, indoor bird shows, a green roof for raptor flight demonstrations, a Café and new classrooms.


Watch the Penguin Point TV Commercial.