Penguins!

We were honored with a trip to a Yellow-eyed penguin preserve on our way home from Dunedin. It’s actually a privately owned facility that operates in harmony with a sheep farm. The farmer realized the wealth of biodiversity that having the penguins around offered, and has worked to help rebuild and maintain habitat for what our tour guide, Rhonda, called the world’s most endangered penguin (but I’m sure everyone says that about their penguin).

In order to observe the penguin without causing much of a disturbance a series of trench-like walkways and blinds were constructed that allowed us to get very close indeed. The really exciting part, though, was when our path was actually blocked by a pair of penguins, and we had to turn back for an alternate route. We were especially fortunate in that we were able to see penguin chicks as well. Birds aren’t good at being cute, but I think these guys manage to pull it off somehow. It was kind of surreal though to be dodging sheep and navigating around sheep poo in order to see penguins.

We were also able to see, and get quite close to, more fur seals. If you know Maggie Superstar (my dog), it is impossible not to see a resemblance between these great, slow and awkwardly moving masses, and Maggie relaxing in a spot of sunlight.

A penguin hospital is also run for penguins (as opposed to emus, as you may have been lead to believe) who have been damaged by people, or, the department of conservation removed several chicks this year because it appeared that they were not getting enough food from their parents, and they are now being raised here.

http://www.yellow-eyedpenguin.org.nz/