Mrs 199

This is a yellow-eyed penguin female from box 199 - hence the name and she really struggled to raise her chick this past summer - so much so that we had to relieve her and do it in rehab for her. When this photo was taken she was in her 2nd week of the moult and she had wandered down to the beach - maybe for a drink, but she walked so slowly and laboriously and though there appeared nothing wrong with her, she 'felt' wrong. So we wanted to be safe rather than sorry and weighed her and she was only 4.7kg. She would have perished through her moult and we took her into rehab to see her through. Sometimes it's a gut feeling we get about a penguin which is hard to describe or justify but more often than not it pans out. In this case, hopefully with more fertile eggs in September!! Bless her, she was such an easy bird to care for.

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