Velma

Unlike her Oamaru side-kick Roxie who preferred to moult in the rocks in the company of a bunch of young fur seals, Velma moulted on the premises of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony. She decided to moult on a beach at Kakanui where people walk their dogs, which no one but her thought was a good idea. So the good folks of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony picked her up and put her in a pen tucked away in the back of the colony premises.

Here, Velma moulted without being bothered by anyone. No foot traffic, no dog walkers, even the staff of the OBPC left her in peace. Unlike most other tawaki that ended up at rehabilitation centres, the OBPC research manager Philippa Agnew thought that Velma was in pretty good shape and did not need any feeding. As a result, Velma ended up in the group of East Coast tawaki that moulted unassisted – or rather without feeding and other direct interventions.

The same day Katiki was fitted with a satellite tag at Katiki Point, our team drove to the OBPC to fit a satellite tracker to Velma. She was the polar opposite to Katiki. Firstly, Velma was one of the smallest tawaki we have come across; she is a one-year-old bird (noticeable because of her bill colour is leaning towards a brownish hue) and a petite female. But she was pleasant to work with, she actually dozed off during the satellite tag deployment and curiously examined her satellite tracker when she was released in the same spot Roxie hung out a couple of weeks earlier.

She waited for another couple of days before she left terra firma behind. She seems to have an affinity for land, though. She followed the coast southward on her first two days before making landfall at Shag Point for a night. She then continued to follow the coast for another couple of days and again seem to have spent a night on land, either at Doctor’s Point (maybe she even said “Hello” to Jill, who we’re going to introduce you to tomorrow) or on the Penguin Place premises. We have two fixes for her that night at both sites.

After that night she decided that it was time have a proper look for food and headed south-east away from the NZ mainland. This had us worried for a while. Two satellite tracked tawaki from Oamaru both travelled in that direction last year and stopped transmitting not long after, potentially because they met an untimely demise. However, Velma started doodling in three distinct areas for the next week or so and finally turned south-west.

A few hours ago, she reached the Auckland Islands. She has been swimming around 10-15 km from the main island’s southeast coast. It will be very interesting to see if she makes landfall again. In that case, all of us here will be very envious – none of us has ever made it down to these fascinating subantarctic islands.