How far have you gone for your favourite lunch? New Zealand police were this week tasked with an interesting call-out: to remove two curious little blue penguins from a sushi shop in Wellington.

The penguins weren’t prepared to take no for an answer, and returned to the shop when the coast was clear of authorities.

According to news outlet RNZ, police said “waddling vagrants were removed from their sushi stand refuge earlier today by Constable John Zhu”.

That was at 6.30am. By the evening, they were back.

Tweet from @FirstUpRNZ

It was probably less to do with the food on offer, and more to do with the birds seeking out an ideal nesting site, the Department of Conservation said.

The shop is outside Wellington railway station, opposite the harbour, where the birds likely came from.

Department operations manager Jack Mace told news outlet RNZ it was common to see little blue penguins in the harbour – but it wasn’t common for them to cross lanes of traffic to make it to the railway station.

At this time of year, Mr Mace said, penguins were sniffing out places to nest for the upcoming breeding season.