Breeding season
This time of year is busy for yellow-eyed penguins. They are molting, replacing all of their feathers at once for a brand new set. This is very energetically taxing and because they are no...
Category: field work
Fieldwork week 1 day 5
Location: Hina Hina Cove, Catlins Date: 10/19/2018 What a place! Besides the very long and a bit challenging walk through private paddocks and over a bumpy, not greatly maintained dirt road, it was a...
Fieldwork week 1 day 4
Location: Nugget Point, Catlins Date: 10/18/2018 Exhaustion took over so blog posts have been stalled for a few days. But back to it! Our 4th day (Thursday) started with a quick breakfast. We we...
Fieldwork week 1 day 3
Location: Owaka Head and Jack’s Bay, Catlins Date: 10/17/2018 Cereal and tea for breakfast. We left the accommodations at 8:45 and traveled by two yutes (trucks) near to the site from the day before,...
Fieldwork week 1 day 2
Location: Penguin Bay, Catlins Date: 10/16/2018 Off we go! After eggs and bacon for breakfast, we left the accommodations at 9:30am. 2 4wd trucks took us to Penguin Bay. The roads are very windy...
Fieldwork trip 1 day 1
Location: Catlins Date: 10/15/2018 The goal of the week: count penguin nests at 4-5 different sites, including scanning for transponders to ID birds, counting eggs, GPS locate each nest, and deploy a few GPS...
Weekend trip to the Catlins
13-15 July The Department of Conservation (DOC) in New Zealand is roughly equivalent to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Government run, they do everything from protecting species, restoring habitat, research, development, monitoring, reporting, and...
Surprised I am alive
Thursday was a big day. I had two meetings with other penguin people to discuss a range of topics, including my proposed PhD research. Then it gets good. Another PhD student Mel asked me...