At first they came ashore quietly in carefully creeping groups. Now, they're under the car, hustling under a cupboard, waddling along footpaths, and looking in through windows.

It's like the neighbours are having their biggest-ever party except that Toni and Lance Hingston's neighbours are a couple of hundred breeding pairs of little penguins (Eudyptula minor).

The retired couple live in a beautiful house atop a coastal headland between Ulverstone and the aptly named village of Penguin, in north-west Tasmania.

The 'party' happens every night in the warmer half of the year. The chaotic and comically clumsy homecoming of penguins and shearwaters (mutton birds) creates a cacophonous din.

Toni and Lance Hingston wait in the twilight, in front of their home, for the arrival of the little penguins. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

The adult birds have been away swimming, diving, and fishing in Bass Strait since dawn.

The hungry chicks in burrows, under rock-shelves — even in the bushes along the driveway — give full voice to their excitement that the parents are home.

"We can't touch any of the vegetation here, for obvious reasons, and the nests are fragile so we never ever walk among them," Ms Hingston said.

"And we don't have a garden — this colony is the garden.

A little penguin passes through the Hingstons' garage on the way to its nest. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

"I just love coming down here and sitting on that log there on the shore, just quietly watching the penguins come in.

"I'm here most nights in the peak time but by the time we go back to the house, there are penguins everywhere around there as well.

"A friend who was here the other night said 'This is like an Attenborough film but it's happening right now at your house'."

The Hingstons bought the house, on what is called Penguin Point, in 1979. Mr Hington was a motor mechanic and Ms Hingston a teacher.

Little penguin chicks awaiting the return of parents who swim and dive all day for fish to feed them with. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

The views from the house are phenomenal, looking over a group of small islands called The Sisters to the east and 180 degrees back to the west, past the softly twitching night lights of Penguin township.

The penguin colony was an unexpected bonus.

"We had no idea how much wildlife was here. And it's not only penguins, there are all sorts of things here," Mr Hingston said, easing down onto the couple's favourite driftwood penguin-viewing seat.

"There are terns and wallabies and pied oyster catchers nesting on the east side. There is a large seagull breeding rookery out on one of the Sisters."

Little penguins often knock on the doors and windows of Lance and Toni Hingston's house. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

It's almost dark before the first penguins appear like soundless apparitions on the shoreline. They very warily move between rocks as a little group of new arrivals gathers together to help protect against predators.

Before long there are two or three streams of little penguins coming ashore along other nearby 'runs'. Shearwaters, jet-like in flight, start to swoop low overhead, at this stage just reconnoitring nest sites.

"We brought people here for tours for about 10 years but then Lance got sick and we stopped," Ms Hingston whispered as a procession of forward-leaning waddlers lurches by to our right.

"We didn't feel like we could start again afterwards, it was a bit too much of our life taken up with it. It was wonderful though meeting people from all over the world and letting them see this."

Little penguins use the Hingstons' garden as their rookery. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Mr Hingston's favourite story from the tour days and in fact his favourite story, full stop, is the tale of the "Italian mating shoes".

"I had a group and the first person after me had pointy-toed patent leather shoes on. A penguin came from a nest and another came from the sea and they met on the path," Mr Hingston said, already laughing.

"They actually met on this bloke's shoe and decided to, let's say, have a little session there! You should have seen the bloke's face.

"He didn't know where to look or what to do or what to say. He just froze, for the sake of nature, and for the sake of his Italian shoes."

Little penguins tend to come ashore in groups to protect themselves against predators. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

As the activity in the colony peaks, the couple walks carefully back to the house via the same foreshore steps, underneath which a little penguin is looking for its nest.

The sound of reunited parents and chicks seems to swell with every step and the array of different calls and sounds is surprising, almost exotic sounding.

Right next to the house, penguins waddle casually along the footpath. What looks like a rockery garden, in the gloom, is actually wild nest-sites, part of the colony.

There are little penguins in the driveway, a little troupe passing under the Hingstons' car towards a favoured hidey hole near the hot water cylinder in the garage.

Lance and Tony Hingston walk through their side yard, past The Sisters, a group of islands offshore from their home, to the penguin colony at the front of their house. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

Even inside the house, the sound of the penguin party fills the night. A couple of cute little faces even press momentarily to the glass to look in.

Mr Hingston explains that shearwaters sometimes overshoot the rookery and land in their internal courtyard. He releases them but shakes his head at how a bird that can fly to the Arctic region and back every year still hasn't learnt how to land.

"We opened the front doors one night and a penguin was just sitting on the step," Ms Hingston said.

"He came in about a metre and just stood there having a look around and then toddled back out again.

A little penguin seeks out a nest behind the steps that lead from the Hingstons' house to the foreshore. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves )

"You get used to the sound, you almost don't hear it after a while, but if you have a bad night you might think 'How on earth do we sleep through this?'

"It's really strange when they go, the whole headland becomes dead. Then when they come back in spring, it's almost as if they create an energy. It's exciting."