Sunday 26th November 2017

Beautiful Yellow-eyed penguin chicks

​Hello friends and family
Sunday was glorious – sunny and still.
Hiltrun and I did the monitoring round and found all the chicks were well and growing. Mel came up on Monday and as we were leaving the reserve I decided to show her the nest with the oldest chicks – they had diphtheria.

The hardware used to harvest the grass next door

​Jan came with me on Tuesday and we found diphtheria in 30 of the 42 nests that still have chicks in them. Fortunately, only one chick had died so I think we caught the outbreak in time. The other good thing is that the weather is great, so it is nice in the reserves.

Yellow-eyed penguin chicks - so cute and so fragile

​Chris and I went to Oamaru on Thursday afternoon to count the Red-billed gulls nesting on the breakwater. Chris counted 140 nests.

Red billed gulls with chicks and eggs

​By Friday we had had 4 chicks die, treated 45 and had 16 not infected. This outbreak is worse than last year. Yesterday we did a full round and 2 chicks were outside their nest bowls – alive but cold so likely to die. We put them back under their parents and hope for the best. 2/3 of the infected chicks had responded well to the antibiotics and there are only 10 nests left to treat.

A brand new Seal pup

We saw the first new seal pups of the season and the Red-billed gulls here have increased from last season.
Have a great week
Rosalie
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