Sunday 10th September 2017

A pair of Yellow-eyed penguins enjoying the sun

​Hello friends and family
I have had a week of catching up on jobs around the place. Somehow tasks just seem to accumulate until there is no comfort in ignoring them anymore and so I have burned prunings, dug gardens, sprayed thistles and potted up plants.
Most of the jobs that accumulate have a previous step and so on Tuesday I ordered more mite control for the bees and began the spring Varroa management by treating the hives at Eason’s road. The 4 hives looked strong.

A Juvenile penguin going past

​I had lunch with Marian on Thursday and then picked up Chris from the bus. We went to the Moeraki colony and continued our planting and weeding work for the afternoon and the next morning. The timber for making new penguin boxes arrived and now Chris has work to do in the shed if it rains.

An adult just resting

​The male penguins are staying home and making a lot of noise and somehow this seems to be an invitation to the irresponsible tourists to climb the fences and disturb the birds. By chasing the last of the breeders within public view, these people are destroying the tourist experience for everyone else. Research presented at the Symposium showed that being within 50 m of a penguin disrupts its normal behaviour. The penguins cannot breed successfully with this harassment.

Human footprints stomping all over penguin footprints

And just when I could easily despair, we get a generous donation from the Netherlands and I realise that the work we do matters to the whole planet.
Have a great week!
Rosalie
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