September 2022

While breeding deep under tree roots certainly has significant advantages for tawaki that want to avoid being easily accessed by two-legged predators (i.e. humans), it also has the disadvantage that such tree root caves can be obliterated by a storm that blows over the tree to which said roots belong.

Exactly this has happened in early August on East Shelter Island, when a massive storm ravaged Fiordland. In the centre of the island stands – or rather ‘stood’ – a massive rātā tree whose roots extended far from the trunk. A total of 5 tawaki pairs called this root system their home. We called it the ‘honey pot’ as we found a good number of penguins in there when we first deployed satellite trackers on bird after the moult.

Of the five nests, there was only one nest left which had its ceiling more or less ripped away completely. The male tawaki who is guarding its chick in this lofty nest does not seem to appreciate the new skylight in his home. But clearly breeding was well underway when the tree toppled, otherwise the bird would not have decided to breed under such exposed circumstances.

What happened to the other nests, we can’t say for sure. However, we did not find any dead penguins, so we can assume that the other former rātā tenants made it out okay.

The rātā is completely blown over so that, where there was once closed forest canopy, there is now a huge clearing. The forest floor where the rātā landed is the main highway for tawaki breeding on the northern side of the island. No doubt that arboric monster creates a huge obstruction for the penguin traffic. The falling trunk also narrowly missed nest #111 which is active and well. But talking about a close shave…

Finally, field work for the Tawaki Project 2022 is underway again! We started off with a 10-day survey trip to Te Puaitaha/Breaksea and Tamatea/Dusky Sounds with the incredible support of Fiordland Expeditions aboard the Tutuko.

Checks of our marked colonies in Doubtful Sound/Patea on Seymour and Shelter Islands were first on our list of tasks. Nothing better to get into the field work groove than crawling into narrow caves to inspect penguin nests.

Turns out, the majority of nests are back in business albeit about 2-3 weeks behind the usual schedule. Many birds were still incubating eggs when we would have expected to see chicks all around. Obviously, the third year of La Niña has an effect on the timing of breeding.

With Myrene Otis, Robin Long as well as Jeff White and Thomas Mattern, we reinstated the #TawakiGirls and #TawakiBoys teams from a couple of years ago. But it quickly became clear that searching for tawaki in often narrow underground caves, did not really make for a fair competition between the two teams. Basically, whichever team had Robin in wins.

Like in the previous years, the Tutoko was our floating home base for the trip. Skipper “tawaki sniffer dog” Abo (if he says “over there’s tawaki” there will be tawaki) and his partner Mandy completed our team (Mandy actually hopped ashore in most of our missions as an honorary #TawakiBoy).

After checking all nests on Seymour on the first day out, we spent the entire second day on Shelter Island, before steaming south towards Breaksea Sound.