Sunday 2nd April 2017

Bunny photo bomb

​Hello friends and family
After the damp start on Sunday, the sun came out and so Anne-Claire and I could get our penguin work done. I got a call from Fleur in the afternoon, asking me to speak to a group of visiting students, and she would shout us dinner. It all worked out just fine, the students were studying a paper on tourism so the effects of uncontrolled visitors to the reserve made the core of the subject. It was reassuring to have similar sentiments expressed in the media both before the talk and after it. When people hear the story of the penguin’s decline here, they always ask me why? Of course, I don’t know why our penguins are considered expendable by the people with the power to fix it.

Playtime for the seal pups

​On Monday Lisa brought us an emaciated Little penguin to rehabilitate and Tom and Erica arrived at the same time! It was chaos! Fortunately, Anne-Claire sorted out the 2 volunteers while I settled the penguin in. It was so chaotic that I lost the scales and it took 4 days to find them again.
Tom has water-blasted the house for me and Erica has trimmed, weeded and cleaned the place so now it looks loved again. Anne-Claire left on Wednesday morning (thank you so much for all of your help) and Stewart brought in a new injured penguin.

Two Kaka-beaks thriving in the forest

On Wednesday afternoon, we found another struggling penguin – a mum who was only 4.3 Kg and has not yet moulted. Thursday was time to farewell Tome and Erica and welcome Chris and Hiltrun. On Friday, we went to find the partner of Wednesday’s starving penguin. He was starving too, so very lucky that we went looking. We also noticed signs of Falcon kill so seeing it on Saturday was a real treat. We held great fears for her safety as a lot of poison has been put down for the rabbits.
Have a great week!
Rosalie
​