Sunday 11th November 2018

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
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