A photographer captured 2 widowed penguins enjoying the Melbourne skyline together to honor 'those that can be with the person they love most'

• An image of two widowed penguins cuddling while admiring the nighttime skyline in Melbourne, Australia has provoked an emotional response from people around the world.
• Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner captured the tender moment in 2019, but only recently shared the images with the public on Instagram.
• He had to spend three full nights with the colony to get the touching snaps.
• "They meet regularly comforting each other and standing together for hours watching the dancing lights of the nearby city," he said.
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A photo of two widowed penguins cuddling together while admiring the Melbourne skyline has provoked an emotional response from people around the world.

Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner snapped the touching moment in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in 2019, but only recently shared the images on Instagram.

After the photos were shared on Twitter, too, they swiftly started trending.

"Couldn't stop thinking about these penguins enjoying the Melbourne skyline together so i found the original photographer and apparently they're BOTH WIDOWED i can't handle it," tweeted Matt, the man behind two popular dog Twitter accounts, whose tweet now has 141,000 likes and 44,500 retweets.

"This is too beautiful for words," replied a woman named Carole Nelson, while Kayleigh Blair added: "I'm not crying, you're crying."

"During times like this the truly lucky ones are those that can be with the person/people they love most. I captured this moment about a year ago," Baumgaertner wrote on Instagram alongside the first two images.

"These two Fairy penguins poised upon a rock overlooking the Melbourne skyline were standing there for hours, flipper in flipper, watching the sparkling lights of the skyline and ocean. A volunteer approached me and told me that the white one was an elderly lady who had lost her partner and apparently so did the younger male to the left.

"Since then they meet regularly comforting each other and standing together for hours watching the dancing lights of the nearby city."

Baumgaertner explained that he spent three full nights with the penguin colony before getting his snaps.

"Between not being able or allowed to use any lights and the tiny penguins continuously moving, rubbing their flippers on each other's backs and cleaning one another, it was really hard to get a shot but I got lucky during one beautiful moment," he said.

A few days later, the photographer shared one more snap of the penguins, with some more information about them.

"The way that these two lovebirds were caring for one another stood out from the entire colony," he said.

"While all the other penguins were sleeping or running around, those two seemed to just stand there and enjoy every second they had together, holding each other in their flippers and talking about penguin stuff.

"Pain has brought them together. I guess sometimes you find love when you least expect it. It's a privilege to truly love someone, paradisiacal when they love you back."

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