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From our scientist, Hiltrun Ratz, PhD
scientist@penguins.org.nz |
is a single chick with a young dad and a slightly older mother who had lost her mate. Her father had been hanging about in the neighbourhood and had brought the odd juvenile home but when the neighbour failed to come home he moved in with the widow and voila: he got to raise a chick. Being quite young it's a good thing that he can now take the summer off and prepare for the moult. There is always - hopefully - next year to try again.
And his mate have stepped up again and adopted a couple of eggs that hatched and grew into two beautiful chicks - one is passed out behind the nest box. Well done, boys. Let's do it all again next year.
These chicks have just been fed and are quite content. They seem to be happy to sit close together, even huddled, a bit like the chicks of other penguin species. While neighbouring Yellow-eyed penguin chicks often sit together in the colony while their parents are out feeding they don't get a chance to sit in large numbers because they are just not that many and nests tend to be quite scattered about. Here, plenty of fur balls all around. This super-sponsored family - box Uncle Chang, father is Stewie Junior and mother is Anna - now has one of its chicks sponsored and called Little Chang. Thank you! It's playing nice in kindergarten-rehab now. All the chicks there have put on weight since we weighed them about Christmas, so it's going well.
This is the last photo of the chick being raised in this sponsored box - thank you Penny! - from about mid December. On every other visit since then it had crawled into the bushes behind the nest usually with a parent and there was no way of getting a decent photo. It is now of course in rehab.
A little unlucky this year because one of her chicks died due to adult fighting but she got the remaining chick is sponsored and called Giles - to this size and we are now doing the rest - and Stitches will hopefully get to breed again next year.
Ciara lives in this box and she was raising one chick. It made it through Diphtheria and is now safely tucked away in rehab and Ciara is having the rest of the summer off from chick rearing. There is a good chance she will make it through the moult unassisted - we will keep an eye on all our females in particular - but for now she can concentrate on getting fat.
We have many generous sponsors for nest boxes but they don't all end up in the penguin colony. This one is used in the hospital now and the chicks like it. They are getting used to hanging out together but some jump fences to go to the neighbouring pen - so we never know how many chicks or which is which at any time. They are now micro-chipped so we can track their progress as needed. About half of them are now feeding from the hand but they do frighten themselves sometimes and hide behind each other. It's really very adorable!
We have found Poppy's chick and brought it into rehab. It must have been hiding so well that we could not find it. So now in total we have lost 3 chicks for sure, two we found the bodies and one where the parents were home alone a few days later. We have a total of 49 chicks now with 48 in rehab. The youngest and smallest is still with the parents and its nest is surrounded by traps.
This is a newly sponsored chick that lives in a cave! - well, it used to. Now it is in rehab facility, aka kindergarten. Kowhai's father is Odd Simen and every other year he and his mate breed in this cave that we have kitted out with an extra roof so that the rain does not dribble down on their heads! Thank you, Kowhai's sponsor, for your love and support. Kowhai is safe and learning to eat out of the hand!
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