Sunday 12th January 2020

Lined up for dinner!

​Hello friends and family
We are busy shuffling fish from the freezer, to the laundry, to containers and then into penguins. The extreme weather that we have had means it is a challenge to get the fish defrosted in the serious quantities required. 

Small charity - one size must fit all!

​The American group from Lee McRae college who are studying wildlife rehabilitation visited on Sunday, but the weather was too bad to do anything outside. They came back for the day on Monday and protected cabbage trees in the morning and cleaned penguin pens in the afternoon. Their vet, Lee spent the day with us on Tuesday and we talked a lot about feathers. In flying birds, the shafts of the feathers tell the story of the bird’s health. We think that the state of our penguin feathers currently reflects their health when they grew the feathers for their last moult. The starvation event last year is showing up as degraded feathers now. We will be extra vigilant in our monitoring.

Our Pohutukawa is excelling itself

​On Tuesday we did the rounds and again on Thursday. We weighed the chick still in the colony and it is now 2.5 Kg – double its weight last time. I have released the two adult males and will keep the rest (5) until they moult. We have done running repairs on the enclosures and went to town on Friday.

It is calm in the colonies and the penguins look great

On Saturday, Daniel and I walked the coast with Elaine and then Daniel went fishing while I put supers on the bees. Then we went to the Tavern for tea to celebrate Daniel doing so well at school last year. Dinner was Yum!
Have a great week!
Rosalie
​