Danny

The third of the three desperadoes released on 12 February at Penguin Place, Danny’s admission sheet states “In care as it was moulting in a silly place.” On the East coast, tawaki often end up in rehabilitation centres because they decided to moult at sites with lots of beach traffic.

Although listed as “adult”, Danny’s grey beard exposed him as a young bird probably one or two years old. While Danny seemed to be rather intrigued when he spotted Sandy with her satellite tracker in the swimming pool of the rehab facility, he proved to be a stroppy fellow when it was his turn to get the high-tech accessory fitted. He wriggled and jiggled throughout the process and made life for Thomas and Richard difficult. In the end, Richard was covered in epoxy resin that is used to seal the adhesive tape with which the devices are attached to the penguins’ feathers.

When released with Sandy and Motley, Danny was quick to follow the example of the other two birds and scampered off into the bushes where he remained for the next three days. In the morning of 16 February 2020, Danny took off.

He’s been hot on Motley’s tail, seemingly mimicking his every move. He followed the coastline south, doodled around off the Catlins and then headed southwest towards the Auckland Islands – always one day behind Motley. But then Danny must have hit some awesome feeding conditions as he first stopped his journey for four days to forage in an area, presumably teeming with food, about 120 km northwest of the Auckland Islands.

He finally continued to follow Motley, only to hit another food patch a week later, this time around 300 km west of the Auckland Islands. Only after a week of going backwards and forwards in that prey patch, he resumed is trip and is today 250 km west of Macquarie Island. Again, doodling. It seems Danny keeps hitting one food jackpot after the other.