Hello friends and family. The rain last Sunday was just soaked up and the place is lush! I spent the day indoors – very rare event, and got some tidying done. On Monday, Jan, Robbie, and I went to the pre-season meeting in Dunedin. It is always a pleasure to catch up with the front-line staff and to find out that the first egg has been laid on the Otago peninsula too. More eggs were laid by Tuesday and by Thursday we had 25 nests with eggs, 8 of them had 2 eggs. We were joined by the team from the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust. There was Ben, their head ranger, Tabi the new CEO, and Sue the retiring CEO. The weather played nice, and they were able to see our operation in action. Later in the day, the rain arrived and now we will be able to continue planting small trees. It is just a matter of negotiating small lambs and electric fences. It rained all day on Friday and on Saturday I did the monitoring rounds in drizzle. No complaints from me! Have a great week!
Rosalie Hello friends and family, Our first egg has arrived! – hatch date 12th September. The warmer spring weather continues. The forecasted cold fronts that brought snow to the south, delivered short cold windy blasts and about 7 drops of rain. I have stopped planting out baby trees as it is too dry. This has resulted in an expansion of the tree nursery. The pair from QE2 Trust came to catch up on Monday which was nice. They weren’t in such a hurry that I could not bring them up to date with our work. Rob is going to be working further north and Cathy is taking over this area. There was great excitement for the team on Tuesday when the first egg arrived. There has been a lot of penguins home here at the lighthouse, but numbers are patchier at the Moeraki colony. After Thursday’s round, we had identified most of the penguins at home. Mrs. Katiki Beach has moved back here so it is not likely that there will be a nest there this season. Yesterday, Hiltrun found 7 more nests with an egg, so we are well underway with the new season. It was also the day of our AGM so we can now put the old season to bed and focus our attention on the new season. The guest speaker was Prof Bruce Russell from Otago University. He is an outstanding speaker and very knowledgeable about Malaria. Only the Green party candidate showed up – the National and Labour candidates were no-shows. I woke this morning to rain – the first real rain in 2 months. We have 10mm so far, falling gently, straight down. All those baby trees we have planted will thrive!
Have a great week! Rosalie Hello friends and family. We have had a great beginning to spring here with clear skies, warm temperatures and not a lot of wind. It is getting too dry to plant out, so I am hoping for a wet spell soon, so we can get on with it and the penguins are chased into boxes to keep their nests dry. We were joined by Jim and Gabe from DOC Dunedin on Monday to show them our setup and share our concerns for the penguins going forward. My concerns for the missing Spotted Shags were repeated – we still have none. Jan joined me on Thursday when we started nest checking. Eggs are due any day now and we want to record the dates as accurately as possible. Hiltrun continued the good work on Saturday while Elaine and I went to the Hampden Beach cleanup. The beach was pretty good, so it took an hour to get a bag full of rubbish. Everything this week was in the shadow of the recent death of my sister-in-law, Shirley Burgess. She was an outgoing, caring person who made the world a better place. Farewell Shirley. Have a great week!
Rosalie Hello friends and family A new month, a new season and plenty of challenges ahead. This week has been overshadowed by the need to make a decision about our tiny chick handling this season. Tiny chicks die without help. For the last 20 years it has been Diphtheric Stomatitis (DS) that has affected more and more chicks until in the last 2 seasons, all chicks got infected, at a younger and younger age. Last season, some even hatched with it. We have been very effective in treating this in the field. At the same time, Respiratory Distress syndrome (RDS) which manifests as random deaths has been increasing in frequency and proportion of chicks infected. This has no known cure, but the chicks uplifted to the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital at 3-5 days old, survived it. We had 34 chicks die from it, the worst infection rate so far. It was a tough decision, but the team stepped up to it and we will be taking our chicks to Dunedin Wildlife Hospital in an effort to improve their survival. We are lucky to have this option available and are very appreciative of the help. In the meantime, the penguins are pairing up and selecting nest sites. Soon we will know how effective our huge efforts in rehab were earlier in the year. On Tuesday morning we were joined by the local National Party candidate to bring him up to speed about the issues facing penguins. On Friday we showed the new community liaison lady from Port Blakely around the Bluffs. The weather remained glorious until Saturday when it became cloudy and damp. The lambs on the farm are arriving and spring is in the air! Have a great week!
Rosalie Hello friends and family, I had a wonderful time with the family. Days started with a spa and all services were provided, yummy food, great coffee and wine and superb company. My granddaughter was even happy with her new rock! I joined the quiz team twice and tried Hello Fresh for the first time. This year we did more eating at home than last year, but the standard was higher. The flights were on time and having my car parked at Christchurch meant better use of my time. Using cruise control certainly makes long trips in the car easier. On my way home I stopped into Pauline’s for breakfast. Pauline is our veterinarian and provides sound advice on all things penguin. She is a treasure! Yesterday Hiltrun and I did the rounds. The penguins are beginning to build their nests and the cabbage leaves the team provided are popular. Some pairs were at home, bonding in the run up to egg laying which could start any time before 10 October, last year it was 11 September. It is great to see the penguins behaving normally, but of concern that there are still no Spotted Shag nests in all the usual places.
Have a great week! Rosalie Hello friends and family. Robbie and I joined Jim from DOC to process the dead whale on Monday. We arrived at 11am and the waves were lapping at the whale, but Jim got the job done anyway. He also discovered active mosquito larvae in a water trough. We gathered in the ropes and headed home. On Tuesday we were joined by Max from the Council. We outlined our fencing project and showed him the site and the issues. I will now apply for funding support. Robbie put the roof on the aviary. This will make it much easier to secure from mosquitoes. Tuesday was also the day that Chris got his paper published. Congratulations! If you would like access to the full paper, please email me. ABSTRACTRehabilitation of wildlife can be a meaningful conservation technique if rehabilitated animals contribute to the breeding population. Endangered Yellow-eyed Penguins (Megadyptes antipodes) are declining on South Island, New Zealand, where modelling published in 2017 predicted their extirpation by 2043. Four management plans dating back to 1989 have been implemented in attempts to mitigate threats. The first three plans overlooked rehabilitation whereas the most recent, published in 2020, regarded rehabilitation as essential to save the South Island population. We assess the outcome of four decades of management of Yellow-eyed Penguins at Moeraki, southeast South Island, by Penguin Rescue, a volunteer conservation organisation. Here, nest numbers have fluctuated but overall increased at a long-term annual average of 5%. Their proportion of the southeast South Island total rose from 1% (six of about 453 nests) in 1982 to 26% (43 of about 166 nests) in 2021. Since 1986 our management has included rehabilitation of all juvenile or adult Yellow-eyed Penguins we encountered locally with life-threatening injuries, emaciation or sickness, with 590 of these marked before release from our rehabilitation facility. We accounted for the effect of rehabilitation on nest numbers by subtracting the number of rehabilitated female breeders and their female descendants from the total number of female breeders. Without rehabilitation nest numbers at Moeraki in 2021 probably would have remained similar to the initial six nests in 1982 instead of the seven-fold increase through four decades. We conclude that rehabilitation is an effective management technique for this species. Wednesday was my day at the Toptip. These seem to come around very quickly. The weather forecast was dire, so I headed out with my hot coffee and hot water bottle and stayed comfortable despite the snow flurries coming past horizontally with the strong, bitter wind. I also excelled myself by buying a pair of gloves which will be ideal for penguin wrangling – unfortunately, they belonged to the rubbish man. Owen and Chrissie called in, looking fantastic after a bit of maintenance. I went to town on Friday to get the car serviced and checked out the Shags on Sumpter Wharf. It was quite busy when I arrived, but by the time I had got to the viewing point, the Spotted Shags had gone. No breeding yet!
Have a great week! Rosalie Hello friends and family Sunday was cold and wet – 27mm of rain, followed by another 7mm on Monday. All I could get done outside was to pot up a few more plants. It is great having the space freed up by planting trees out, to put the new ones. On Tuesday we split into two groups, one for each colony, and finally released the juvenile penguin. There were several pairs of penguins home at both colonies – looking chunky and behaving normally. They are still fishing for longer each day and you will be able to see them on the repaired webcam from about 4 pm. On Thursday it was very windy, so we just did the monitoring rounds and spent the rest of the day indoors. The juvenile penguin that we had released on Tuesday was back by the landing, looking just fine. What a contrast for Friday! Robbie and I attended the Hui, which started here and then moved to the Moeraki Marae. It was so pleasant, we lingered out on the point to discus how to better protect the seals from the tourists. At the Hui, I again advocated for marine protection for the penguins. Yesterday I was reminded that it is not just penguins for whom this protection is so important, Murray found a dead whale.
It was twice the size of the last one. We think it is an adult, female, Grey Beaked Whale. It was bleeding, but there were no wounds to explain its death. Have a great week! Rosalie Hello friends and family Once again, we had a week that started with lovely weather. The temperature got up to 18 degrees and it was great weather for planting. Each gap in the plant nursery is replaced by smaller trees that need longer to establish roots. Jan helped with the planting on Tuesday and on Thursday we went to the Bluffs to plant and were joined by Robbie and Tobi. The penguins are all out fishing. Thank goodness that we can see footprints to tell us that they are coming and going. With the Spotted Shags, it is not the same. There are none here on our end of the peninsula. At this time of the year, they are normally pairing off and present in the breeding areas. This year the breeding areas are empty. Jan has seen some at Shag point, so hopefully they have gone there and will be back soon. Jan came out again yesterday and we did more planting. Last night we got 17mm of light rain which will establish all the new plants. It fell straight down too, which means they all get a drink. Have a great week!
Rosalie. |
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