Yum, regurgitated fish!

Today I started my drive back to Christchurch. Thanks to the wonders of social media I had two passengers to help share fuel costs. I picked up one in Queenstown and one in Alexandra. We drove to Dunedin. I wanted to stop there again on the way back because with a car I could get out to the peninsular to try to see penguins.

And I was very lucky to see Yellow-eyed penguins. They are the world’s most endangered penguins. The Penguin Place sanctuary protects them from predators and conserves their habitat. I got a place on the last tour of the day and an adult (called Maggie) had just returned from fishing. We watched her resting and then her chick arrived to be fed. The chick is one of only 5 surviving chicks at the sanctuary (12 hatched this year) and is 11 weeks old. I took so many photos it’s been very difficult to choose. The extra is the chick yelling for more food after the feed was over.

They also run a penguin hospital where injured penguins from around the South Island are brought. At the moment they mostly have underweight young Yellow-eyed penguins who won’t survive their first moulting. When they moult they can’t go in the water for 4 weeks so those that don’t feed well before end up starving. The youngsters are brought in to the hospital to be fed up.


It was amazing to watch the mother and chick in their natural environment and very sad to hear about the challenges to the survival of the Yellow-eyed penguins. I also liked that the centre is proud of the fact that they had a pair of male penguins adopt and successfully raise an orphan chick.