 Poster baby, photo from NZ Geographic. See link in last week's blog Sunday 31st December 2023 Hello friends and family, Happy New Year 2023 brought with it some highs and some lows. As always, when working with awesome creatures they can surprise you. On Tuesday we weighed the nest 35 chicks and they had put on over 1Kg each (25%+). There are 3 adults feeding them. When Mrs 6 stopped coming home, we uplifted the 2 chicks that were failing to thrive and brought them into care. Mr 6 journeyed up the hill, past six other nests to nest 35. The occupants there had moved up the hill from nest 6 last season when they were his neighbours. There was blood! Somehow the 3 adults have come to an arrangement and the 2 chicks are thriving! We also have 2 males and 1 female attending nest 49 but they have been doing that all season. Their chick is making normal weight gains.  Poster baby 5 weeks later Jan and Robbie did the monitoring round on Thursday while I went to Dunedin to pick up Dan. By evening he had sorted out my technical problems and I can now stream the internet onto my TV! On Friday we went to the Bluffs to install a mosquito trap and will put some out in these reserves.  Holiday madness I hold great hopes for 2024. That all 60 of our chicks survive and we have more nests in the new season. As the number of nests decline, our efforts increase. The team has stepped up this year, motivated by care for our environment, love of our penguins and joy in self-actualization. I am proud of the team and our results.  Southern Rata welcoming the New Year Happy New Year Rosalie   growing fast Hello friends and family.  NZ Christmas colour Merry Christmas. It has warmed up here in the south. I enjoy getting up in the morning when it is warm, and no jacket is needed. On Tuesday we weighed the chicks down the hill and 2/3 of them now weigh more than 3kg. We let the 2 adults go and later got blood results that one of them tested positive for Malaria. I went down the hill on Wednesday to look for it and found 5 penguins all having a party on the beach!  two of the younger chicks In the evening, Hiltrun called in a penguin on Katiki Beach and Murray and Bronwyn caught it. It is in a very sorry state and will need a while to recover. It too has Malaria, but it will get treated.  spot the chick! On Thursday we weighed the chicks in the Moeraki colony. They are all making good progress. On some days, both parents go fishing and leave the chicks hidden at home. It can take a while to find them as they stay very still and quiet, and of course, they are still brown and fluffy, so they blend in.  Meeting the neighbours. If you have forgotten someone this gift giving season, you could always give them a subscription to our Live cam (Penguin Rescue on YouTube) which now has sound!  Aotearoa, still blooming after 20 years. Have a great week! Rosalie  growing fast in care Hello friends and family, I enjoyed a quiet start to the week and was surprized to get 2 calls about stray penguins on Tuesday morning. The team gathered for the weekly weigh in for chicks here at the lighthouse and all of them had put on weight. Our fortunes changed when we found a dead chick at the Moeraki colony. It was decomposing fast, and it was not easy to confirm the cause of death so we will send it off for an autopsy.  loving the shelter of the palisade Robbie brought some disturbing footage of mosquitoes attacking one of our penguins. This is the first evidence of mosquitoes here, other than Malaria in the penguins. They arrived on the penguin at about 10:00 pm and then left again about midnight.  cute than the flowers As the week progressed and the fish did not arrive, anxiety levels rose. This fish was coming from Tauranga using a different distributor and so delivery was an unknown. On Thursday we found another dead chick here in the morning and Jan took it south for autopsy. The rest are making good progress.  camouflage Then, in the afternoon, relief – the fish arrived! I took delivery of 150 boxes of sardines. They will be just right for feeding the penguins. We squeezed all but 25 boxes into our freezers and then I took those to Fleur’s who had agreed to store them for us. Her support over the years has been generous.  Our white Christmas. On Friday Elaine and I set off for Dunedin to meet with Bruce and then have a team meeting about Avian Malaria. After lunch we picked up our 2 injured and recovering penguins from the wildlife hospital and got home at about 3pm. Hiltrun did the monitoring rounds yesterday. Have a great week, Rosalie  learning the ropes of rehab Hello friends and family. All was ticking over nicely at the start of the week until the Tuesday monitoring rounds. The chicks in nest 6 were post guard. (I put a camera on the nest overnight – no adult was recorded coming home to feed the chicks.) We continued and when we got to nest 86, the male was there injured, badly enough to require stitches so we brought him in to go to the wildlife hospital and the chicks in to hand raise. The wonderful man from United Fisheries got back to me. He has sourced a pallet of fish for us which is fantastic. Changes to the MPI regulations have affected the supply of small fish so this was a godsend. We will have our freezer space packed to the limit.  A tiny new pup Wednesday was Toptip day. These seem to come around so fast. The next one will be next year!  On the uphill side of the excluder fence On Thursday we picked up the nest 6 chicks as they were losing weight. The next day, there were no adults home at the nest, so they have abandoned it. The rest of the penguins were fine. Robbie took a load of treasures from my shed to be stored at the Bluffs so we can fit another freezer in the shed if needed.  Life's first adventures On Friday it was time to get a WOF for the car. With the amount of roadworks, it took 50 minutes to get to Oamaru. The traffic seems very heavy these days.  The number of gulls just keeps growing with more eggs being laid. Weeding has become the number two job. We have had enough rain for plants to flourish and the grass is over a meter tall. Have a great week! Rosalie  enjoying the morning sun Hello friends and family, It is always a pleasure to get to the end of November and to look forward to the festive season with some degree of control over events. All the surviving chicks bar one, have come back from the Wildlife Hospital and settled into their nests. The parents are doing the grunt work of feeding them each day. They are leaving early and swapping over during the day so both can feed.  not all of the penguins are chick raising - these two were loafing We had a wonderful surprize on Monday when Murray found another nest at the Bluffs. This puts our total to 40. There was a penguin sitting on two infertile eggs. Hidden away inside a gorse bush, it was a pair we had not seen last season. It now has a chick and a number! Our tally is now 40 nests and 62 chicks.  New nest Tuesday was weighing day here at Katiki Point. We weighed 43 chicks and were happy with their weights but not so much with their mums. The mums are scrawny already, some only 4.5kg. this is an early signal that we may need to help with chick raising.  Whistling frogs have returned to the garden Our other weighing day is normally Thursday but this week we had to return the rental car. This meant 2 cars going to Dunedin, so we seized the day, and all went down for our end of November celebration. We visited the OPERA (Otago peninsula environmental restoration alliance) The weather was great and the visit worthwhile. After that we went out to lunch and then home.  the gulls are now laying This meant weigh day was Friday. Elaine, Jan, and I were joined by Amy from Sea World Kelly Tarltons who are our sponsors. The chicks were fine but once again, thin mums. Mrs 130 was only 4.2kgs. I phoned United Fisheries – no sardines in stock!  first seal pup of the new season seen on 2 December 2023 Yesterday my monitoring round revealed an injured chick in front of a nest box. It looked like a predator had dragged it out. It was very stressed and could not stand so it was another trip to the wildlife hospital.  First adventures Never a dull moment. Have a great week! Rosalie |
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