Sunday 2nd July 2017

just being together

​Hello friends and family
The end of June marks the end of our penguin year and so we begin the review process to help us make smarter decisions for the penguins in the year going forward. At the moment, I am doing monitoring rounds every second day and so this gives me time to do some jobs at Hampden. On the top of the list there is fencing around the Hazelnut trees so the sheep can graze the bottom paddock and then cutting down some gorse so I can plant the 50+ Tree Lucerne I have growing in the aviary here.

testing a refurbished nest box

​I am having to be more flexible than I thought. Plan A – cut down the gorse, starting at the bottom of the hill, arrange it in windrows and plant the tree Lucerne in between. Well the gorse is over 4 m high and once it has fallen I can’t move it! Plan B – let it fall where it may and plant the tree Lucerne in the tangled mass of gorse which will rot down quite quickly. So on Tuesday I got half way up the eastern fence line and then had to cut my way out! The fallen gorse is over a meter deep so maybe the Lucerne will go at the back of the orchard.

showing off the real estate to a new girl

Chris and Hiltrun arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday morning we did the monitoring rounds with chainsaw in hand to cut logs to stuff into the rabbit burrow entrances in the nesting boxes.
This came in the donation box;
Hi, I am Charlotte. I am 27 years old. I am French. I am in New Zealand since January. I would like to help you protect penguins but I think they don’t need money, just room and no people around… I stay 2 hours and half here and I see many people who don’t respect seals and penguins… I am the first to be happy to see them but after I feel so sad when I see people be next to seals to have the best picture they can have it, they don’t care about 10 meters and they don’t care about signs “not enter”. I love this country for the nature but I don’t like the behaviour of some people. I would like someone from the DOC here to check tourists and says to them “STAY AWAY”.
I don’t know if I will be heard but I know in NZ every dream is possible. Thank you for your amazing work. 25th June 2017 at 5:03 pm.
​

Yet another fence climber

Have a great week!
Rosalie
​