 A fine looking juvenile Yellow-eyed penguin Hello friends and family. Chris and Hiltrun came up on Sunday afternoon and we spent Monday and Tuesday working in the reserves. The rain meant that the trees were sodden and drooped down at head-height over the paths so we did some pruning so that we can walk around for a few more months.  A juvenile black shag On Wednesday I took the camper to Oamaru for its annual service and warrant so now it is road worthy once again. The days have been fabulous and I must be getting acclimatised as I am walking over frozen ground but not feeling the cold.  A falcon with a dead rat  more juvenile penguins On Friday I deployed the last of the Fenn traps donated by the Hampden Community Energy Society, baited up with lures from the experts at Rolleston and feel that I have done my best with the traps. At the moment there is a new crop of baby bunnies bopping around so not many hungry predators!  verbal penguins I enjoyed dinner at Elaine’s on Friday night and Chris, Hiltrun and Peter came yesterday afternoon to help prepare the colonies for a new season. From now on we will stay well out of the way of the penguins as they prepare to lay eggs.
Have a great week! Rosalie  penguins heading home Hello friends and family This has been a week where we have had to plan our activities around the weather. On Sunday we took the 3 hospital penguins to the soft release pens and cleaned out the hospital pens. Chris and Hiltrun went home after dinner and on Monday Karsten and I continued with building penguin houses and re-modelling the old ones that were too deep for easy monitoring, monitoring rounds, hole digging, penguin feeding, trap checking …….  A variable oyster catcher Tuesday dawned clear and sunny so we took the chance to walk over the hill and visit the lagoon and Katiki Beach. There were no Sealions in residence but it was easy to see where they had been and how they create paths from the sand to the dunes, creating the only escapes from the beach that has been blocked by erosion. It was a wonderful escape and we were rewarded with lots of birds to see.  A reef heron on the sand! Wednesday was the start of the rain and so after we had been to town in the morning, we had to stay indoors, except for walking across the paddocks to feed the penguins in the soft release pens – we got 29 mm of rain! Fantastic for all of the small trees that we have planted.  A sheep necklace Chris came back on Thursday for a meeting with TRONT, TROM and DOC. Once again we advocated for protection of the penguins here. It was fortunate that he decided to go home after dinner as, first thing Friday morning, we got snow to sea level. It did not linger long but gave us a great excuse to complain about the weather.  Home sweet home Yesterday was the annual penguin symposium in Dunedin and I took Karsten south so he can continue his holiday. Thank you Karsten for your great efforts on behalf of the penguins! While he was here he saw whales, seals penguins and dolphins – not bad eh?  and the snow lingered... Have a great week.
Rosalie |
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