 You have to enjoy the sun while you can! Hello friends and family And so, November continues to be frenetic, and the weather has joined the party! Heavy rain and high winds test our fortitude, but we just dress for it and get on with the jobs at hand. The house is like a Chinese laundry but smells worse!  Anterior synechia - the result of a blow to the eye. On Sunday we checked the chick at the south end of the Moeraki colony and it had fallen out of its nest. We returned it to the nest box and within ½ hour we had a hail storm – lucky chick. On Monday we rescued an adult with an eye injury and had to wait in the truck for the hail to stop. He is known to us as drain bird as he chose to live in a drain below SH 1 until we eventually relocated him to a safer place.  Terns and gulls roost on the island On Wednesday we found a mum that was injured. She was still at home on Thursday, so we were able to put iodine on her wound and weigh the chicks. The risk is that they will starve while she recovers, and the sea is so rough, dad may not be able to cope with the food demand of the family on his own.  Wild, dirty seas On Thursday we also found another dead chick and its sibling, still alive, had maggots in its mouth and died by Friday. Yuck. The good news for Thursday is that we now have our first seal pup of the season. On Thursday night someone broke into the money box again. This time they came out with bolt cutters and removed the brass padlock. I hope the wet weather visitors this week were mean.  Can you spot the chicks? Chris and Hiltrun came up on Friday and Hiltrun and I did the rounds together on Saturday.
We have had 4 more dead chicks – two from inexperienced parents and two from a nest where the parents always seem to struggle to raise their chicks. We now have 54 chicks, and our fingers are crossed for them all. Have a great week! Rosalie  Look carefully - the chick can now stand up Hello friends and family Life is so busy at present! On Sunday we had Sniper the Yellow-eyed penguin detector dog up to search beaches for us. It was a magical day and we found all the penguins that we knew to be there so that was wonderful.  Sniper ready for sleuthing! On Monday we did the monitoring rounds and sorted out some of our new calendars to put with other people to sell. I spent the afternoon preparing for the scheduled power outage on Tuesday that was then deferred to Thursday. On Tuesday Robbie arrived with a small hothouse which he delivered, set up and installed. Thank you, Robbie!  We are entitled to climb fences and go where we like, when we like. After a treatment round on Wednesday morning I went to Oamaru with Jan and we delivered calendars, caught up with Marian and attended an event hosted by the local chapter of rural women that featured the first female president of Federated Farmers. She was inspirational, and I am so glad I got away from penguin shit and joined normal people. We socialised with some McIlraith in-laws of a dear friend of mine.  Dancing cranes in the Oamaru harbour On Thursday we found more sick chicks and 2 more dead ones. Sad. Thank goodness the rest are still alive! On Friday we reached peak treatment with 29 individual chicks needing antibiotics. For 14 0f them it was their last dose, so we are over the hump. Chicks in the last nest started pipping too, which is wonderful.  Gull chicks Saturday was a busy one too! In the morning Hiltrun and I did the rounds and found another 6 sick chicks. This brings the proportion of treated chicks up to 72% so it is as bad as last season. Our productivity is now at 1.4 – it needs to stay over 1.1 for the penguins to be replacing themselves. In the afternoon, Marian and I did the AFB check for the bees. She got stung 3 times and me twice – it was a bit cold and the bees were grumpy. Thank goodness and Marian that it is done for the season.
The media has been interesting this week too. The ODT reported the YEPT as finding the rate of population decrease is slowing which is of little consolation to us as diphtheria is rampant again and little is being done to treat it. TVNZ 1 reported that the penguins will be extinct on mainland NZ in 10 -20 years as the numbers continue to plummet. We can only hope that more awareness brings more resources. Have a great week! Rosalie  Two beautiful babies Hello friends and family The tiny babies down the hill are now my focus and on Tuesday we found a dead one. We also found 3 sick ones, so they were started on anti-biotics. This was also the day that we had a visit from 2 DOC officers from the permits department and it was such a shame that they did not have enough time to prepare for the meeting and then see the work that we are doing. They are over worked!  2 sick chicks with classic external symptoms of Diphtheria Wednesday was my day at the Top-tip shop and once again, I caught up with a lot of the locals who are busy getting on with life. On Thursday the rain arrived. Jan and Robbie joined me for the monitoring rounds and we found another dead chick. It was 2 days old. As Robbie was heading to Dunedin he was able to take it to DOC for autopsy at Massey university. It was diagnosed as having Diphtheria. We also came across 3 more sick ones. By the end of the day we had 58 chicks and 8 eggs yet to hatch.  The first Oyster catcher egg that I have spotted It continued to rain on Friday, so I put the laundry out in the hospital as it now has a roof! We ended up with 40 mm of rain which is a lot for us, and it was quite cold with snow on the mountains.  Just hanging - 2 unemployed penguins enjoy the beach It was too cold to do the bees on Saturday, but we did the rounds and found more sick chicks but no more dead ones!
Have a great week! Rosalie  New life - new hope Hello friends and family. Happy birthday Hamish! I hope your exams are going well and you have your summer accommodation sorted!  Some of the ~ 200 White Fronted Terns that are roosting below the nesting gulls. After helping plant trees at the Waianakarua river mouth on Sunday morning I had a quiet afternoon pottering about and enjoying the day. Monday was a busy one! Julia and Megan came up from Penguin Place and did the monitoring rounds with us. Stewart, Robbie and Jan were here and our focus for the day was making a positive start to the season and sharing best practice. They brought up some boxes of fish and Wayne arrived with 20 more – the freezer is full! I even had to turn on the chest freezer for a day to be able to sort the old fish to the front and the new stuff in the back of the walk-in freezer. What a great way to start the season, with plenty of fish.  The supervisor is back at work! At the end of the round we had 15 chicks. The weather was miserable on Tuesday, so I went to town and got more wire and posts. Jan came out on Wednesday and we did the monitoring rounds. We found 24 beautiful chicks, and sadly, a dead one. Its sibling was very sick and scored a 4 on our new Diphtheria diagnostic sheet so we are treating it with antibiotics.  Our resident White Faced Heron on the hunt for geckos Jan, Robbie and I were joined by Vikki on Thursday and we managed to plant the last of this season’s bulk plantings – 36 Tussocks. We were not as lucky with removing the sheep from Seal Point – 3 attempts and only ½ of them out. We no longer own the sheep – they have been taken over by Ross the farmer to ensure that they get the best possible care.  New penguin chicks are very fragile Jan and I checked the chicks on Friday and all was well – the same again on Saturday with Hiltrun which is awesome.
Have a great week! Rosalie |
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