Facebook news
From our scientist, Hiltrun Ratz, PhD
scientist@penguins.org.nz |
This super-sponsored family's chicks are now named Matty and Jo - specifically sex-neutral names as we can't sex them until they are much older. Thank you for your support and love for the penguins.
The last photos of these two sponsored chicks with their parent at the nest site. They are doing well in kindergarten now.
This is the last photo of Pinke with her parent. She is newly sponsored -thank you - she is a lucky girl - and one of our youngest in rehab. She will do just fine - there are others about her size and with all the food she is getting she'll go big like the others.
She finally had two chicks to raise and was so unlucky that one was killed by a predator, so we took the second one away to rehab. This was the first chick found dead and we did not want to risk the second chick as the predator knew where it lived. As you can see the chick was still guarded - that's how naive yellow-eyed penguins are when it comes to introduced predators. An adult can defend itself but is unlikely to rush to a chick being dragged away by a predator.
This long-term sponsored female has two chicks this season and was doing a wonderful job at raising them - until a predator killed the chick a few nests over and the humans took her chicks away to rehab. Well, at least they are safe and she can prepare for the moult with her mate.
While we have 48 chicks in hospital we also have some adults and juveniles currently enjoying our hospitality. When we decided to uplift all the remaining chicks from the colonies we already had collected Morgan's chicks because he was really sick. He was acting weird e.g. lethargic, huddling in a corner, sleeping all the time etc, and there was no way that this exhausted father could contribute to raising his chicks. And we were not going to burden his mate with them so Morgan and his chicks all came into rehab. Morgan has since rallied somewhat with plenty of rest, salmon and medication and hopefully he can be returned back to his mate soon (who is probably wondering what happened to her family).
This sponsored box is closely surrounded by mature cabbage trees and until the chicks moved there was no way of getting a photo with the name and penguins in it. This is as good as it got with the chicks and an adult hanging out outside the box. The chick of course are now safely in rehab.
When you have two sponsored houses, maybe one is to stand on? Here Chicky, the mother of the two fluff balls behind Casa Lola has decided to stand on the roof. Why? Good question. Maybe to get away from the chicks? They can be annoying when they don't stop begging. Or maybe just because she can.
The chicks started to move about and Corinne's Penguin House had two chicks growing up in it - and then they decided that behind it was the place to be.
This is the last photo of Bequette and her chick. When we found the chick dead it triggered our protective measure of bringing all chicks into rehab to avoid loosing any more to predators. Unfortunately, this one is no longer among the living. We were devastated and could not quite believe that a 4kg chick was still in danger from stoats, ferrets and/or cats. We have learnt our lesson and will step up our trapping efforts for next season.
|
Archives
December 2022
Categories |