March 2016

Last night word reached us that Inger Perkins from the West Coast Penguin Trust made a disturbing discovery while analysing footage from a trail camera deployed last season at Jackson Head.

Using motion triggered trail cameras the trust investigates the impact of terrestrial predators on tawaki at Jackson Head and Gorge River. We are closely collaborating with the trust and maintain the cameras while we’re in the field.

At Gorge River, trust cameras have already recorded how penguin chicks fall prey to stoats, which in New Zealand have wreaked havoc with all kinds of birdlife in the past century. At Jackson Head, however, it is mainly possums that tend to visit penguin nests apparently without causing them any grief.

And as such, analysing the video data has been an enjoyable affair that provided some neat insights into the family life of tawaki. That is, until Inger stumbled across said disturbing footage which raised the question whether Bigfoot or the Yeti might be roaming New Zealand’s West Coast:

(Actually, it’s just a very cheerful Klemens Pütz triggering one of the cameras after checking on one of our GPS logger birds.)