Thank you to all you friends of penguins for your support and interest over the past year. We hope you enjoy our posts and following the stories of some of our charges. For 2018 may you always have someone who greets you with the same enthusiasm when you arrive home as this yellow-eyed penguin male when he spotted his mate arriving home from fishing.

We are so proud of this wee girl who got kind sponsors when she was but a wee chick. She grew up in our colony and her parents are still around working on a pair of siblings this season. They got her away all by themselves on a good weight. We brought her into rehab for a small injury a couple of months later but she learned fishing all by herself. She was in rehab again as a moulting juvenile about 10 months ago and here she is the proud mum of a big fluffy chick. She has an experienced mate who is helping along nicely and as you can see by the fat belly, the chick is thriving! Must be genetic!

This yellow-eyed penguin male was named from the other side of the world and he is the proud father of a very fluffy and healthy chick. Unlike many of the other chicks this one still has a parent at home every day!

Thank you all for your interest and support. We appreciate that you follow our penguins on here on FB and we are happy to share them with you. We hope you have a wonderful festive season and continue to love penguins!
Here one of our favourite: Stitches and her two chicks - big and fluffy!

It is our favourite time of year when our yellow-eyed penguin chicks have grown so much but they are still covered in their brown fluffy feathers. They so much look at soft toys, they are curious and start to explore their environment, but hurry back to mum when there is something unexpected like a photographer!!

Some parents overindulge their chicks - here is a very efficient pair of yellow-eyed penguin parents that are evidently feeding their chicks rather a lot. The right chick is having a lie-down and the left chick looks - well pregnant......what a gut! It is fab to see how well some of our chicks are doing and a delight to watch them getting bigger - and fatter!!

This is a newly sponsored yellow-eyed penguin chick named Rocket with his parents. He is a lucky chap that he has the undivided attention of his parents as he is a singleton. The parents are also experienced breeders and Rocket should do very well growing up. Here he is 7 weeks old and weighs about 3.5kg - not a bad growth spurt from 100g when he hatched!

Penguins are the only other species that walk on two legs as we are and it is the hardest lesson that our brains have to learn is to coordinate walking. It is the same of penguin chicks and here the chick is doing a fair job getting round - it helps to be motivated with hunger!

These two yellow-eyed penguins are both male and they have an adopted chick. Here they are very much behaving like a male and a female with the left one backing into the belly of the right one while they are whispering sweet nothings! This is the courtship behaviour of a female prior to copulation - confused? Yep, so are they.....not that it matters. They are doing a fab job of raising this chick, bless them, and that is all important!

These videos were shot on a cell phone and ain't Attenborough quality but we wanted to share them because they show the behaviour and home life of the penguins, the courting of the pair - yes, the male-male pair as it so happens - the insistence of the chick etc. So here is another helping of life of a yellow-eyed penguin pair on a hot afternoon in December!