Sunday 17th December 2023

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