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From our scientist, Hiltrun Ratz, PhD
scientist@penguins.org.nz 
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This wee girl is enjoying our hospitality for the second time this season: the first time she hadn't moulted and only weighted 5.5kg. That all went well with plenty of salmon. The second time she was picked up, she had been seen in the colony on several consecutive days - never a good sign - lethargic and her weight was not flash either, 4.5kg. So she is in for some TLC, salmon and we are testing her bloods to see if anything is amiss. Hopefully not, and she can be on her merry way again soon.  Those of you who have been following us for a while know that Thor is indeed a girl - so her mate is a this wee boy that we have had in rehab for a while now. He is proven to be difficult to treat for his malaria as his bloods keep coming back positive despite medication. We are trying him on a different type of medication now and hope it will make him feel better. He lies down a lot and gives the impression of feeling really shit.... (either that or he is worried that Thor is running of with the attractive bachelor neighbour while he is recuperating).  This is another chick that is much loved by her sponsor and who has fledged naturally. She has been back into rehab with a sore throat (fungal infection) that was easily treated. We are testing her blood and will treat her for malaria if she is positive. If she is not, she is ready to head out again soon. She has a southern room-mate from the Otago Peninsula (on the left in the photo) who came to us with malaria but is doing much better.  maybe like a bad penny - or maybe she just knows that when she is not feeling well is to go home to the colony. She fledged naturally but has been back in rehab three times since mid May. The good news is she obviously knows how to feed herself. The bad news is that we suspect that she has avian malaria and it seems resistent to the usual medication we give. So we have sourced something else and trying it. Hopefully it works. This is a much-loved penguin, sponsored and 'liked' on FB, hopefully with all that love and interest coming her way she will recover fully soon!  Flippers forward and the crest is up, it seem to say "who's going there?" Yellow-eyed penguins may not have impressive hair-dos like the crested penguins do, but they still use it to good effect to express what they are about!  It's always a joy to see the penguins messing around on the beach doing their thing. Turn up the volume - one of them is showing off! Some just stand about and others are busy running round and flirting: the beach is the meat market - if you are looking of a mate, that's where you show off! The three adult yellow-eyed penguins that came up the beach are a sequence of photos of the same event. The penguins were so full of purpose and were marching about not really caring about the observers on the hill above them. Once they got this close though we made ourselves scarce so to let them get on with whatever they were doing - whatever that was!!  Yellow-eyed penguins have a reputation of being "anti-social" - we could not disagree more. It's just not what we are observing in our colonies: here for example we have three adults have a wee conference talking and showing off to each other. If they were as anti-social as suggested surely they would choose to be as far from each other as possible. (and their nesting is also not anti-social: we had nests that were within 2-3m of each other with plenty alternatives in the vicinity.)  One of our first sponsored boxes, Claire's box had not been used since then, but appears to have found favour with this yellow-eyed penguins who had diligently brought in cabbage tree leaves and already started on nest building and occupying of the nest site - all in preparation of the breeding season due to start in four months! It's never too early!  |
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