Research Diary

About 20 years ago, Ian MacLean devised a cunning plan to count Tawaki along their entire breeding range. He employed tourists to take part in an adventurous survey of the Fiordland penguin in some of the remotest areas of New Zealand. Places no other tourist had seen. A pretty good selling point, quite literally.

The “volunteers” paid for the privilege of being part of this survey and spend several weeks on a ship slowly cruising along the shores of Westland, Fiordland and Stewart Island searching the coastline of sign of Tawaki like scat marks, scratches on the rocks or, of course, the penguins themselves. Occasionally they would land to do a quick search of the bush to count number of nests. These numbers eventually were used to estimate the total number Tawaki.

2,500-3,000 breeding pairs. This number is what the IUCN red list uses as the baseline for the Tawaki population today.

Strangely, though, the survey of Stewart Island was limited to the Western Coastline as well as Port Pegasus in the far South; almost the entire east coast was simply ignored. Which, as it turns out, was quite a faux-pas.

In all McLean and his co-authors found a total of 32 penguins around the sourther tip of Stewart Island and concluded that the “limited observations of Fiordland Crested penguins […] suggest that there are relatively few birds there”.

This, of course, is wrong as I know from my own observations while working with Yellow-eyed penguins a few years ago. Hotte and I had seen lots of Tawaki while sea kayaking between our study sites at Golden and Rollers Beach, i.e. exactly the area that was left out in the survey. Particularly Gull Rock stood out because we would regularly see feeding flocks of terns and tawaki in considerable numbers. In fact, whenever we kayaked past Gull Rock we would always see foraging tawaki.

Early morning feeding flock of red-billed gulls, white-fronted terns and tawaki at Gull Rock

Which is why we are on Stewart Island right now in the first place. And today was the last day of filming.

We went out very early this morning just before 6am. The idea was to be out at Gull Rock for two turns of the tide. The film crew had decided they wanted to be at the rock during slack water in the morning and the afternoon in an effort to get more underwater footage.

Getting ready for the last day of under water filming

Hotte had come to the island a couple of days ago for a bit of a holiday. But I convinced him that holidays are for retirees and got him to join us on the boat for a day. I decided that we’d do something useful for a change and let us get dropped off at Golden Beach (the site where Hotte and I had worked with Yellow-eyed penguins) which is just a few hundred metres from Gull Rock. I was keen to check out the sea caves in the rocks on either side of the beach and look for Tawaki.

In 2006 when I last set foot on the beach, I had checked out one cave to the South an saw some Tawaki in there. But back then I didn’t really make an effort to find out if the birds were actually breeding in there. Today I was more determined to get to the bottom of this.

When we approached the beach Morgan who was driving the dinghy spotted a penguin on the rocks north of Golden beach. After jumping onto the soft sand I decided to have a look there first. While Hotte started counting the tracks of Yellow-eyed penguins along the beach (10 birds) I clambered across the rocks to where I saw the tawaki five minutes ago.

The rocky shore north of Golden Beach

Of course, I couldn’t get there even though it was low tide. A carpet of slippery bull kelp lined the rocks and there was a trench where the water still stood a couple of meters deep preventing me from getting to where I thought the penguin had been. While I was considering my options I heard muffled Tawaki cries. In fact, they were so faint that it took me a while to register them as such. At first I looked up but the idea of Tawaki scaling a three-metre cliff to breed in the bush seemed rather silly.

Then I noticed a gap rocks coevered in bull kelp. A narrow cave. Perhaps a penguin roosting in there?

At first sight little more than a gap in the rocks…

I got out my head torch and climbed from the rocks down onto the sand which effectively is the seafloor for the 20 hours outside of low tide. I ducked into the crevasse and noticed green sea weed lining its ceiling. Obviously this cave gets flooded at high tide. I was about to turn back when a Tawaki bark echoed through the darkness – and it clearly originated from the far end of the cave. I climbed up a short slope high enough to clear of water even at high tide.

I looked behind me and saw the narrow cave entrance. I turned my head slowly until I saw them in front of me – little cave men with white bellies wearing what looked like rugged, brown, furry coats. It took me a while to recognise two Tawaki chicks almost ready to fledge in front of me. They were quickly joined by two adult penguins that eyed me curiously. The cave itself continued around a corner.

Little Cave Men and their parents

With two chicks there must be at least two nests in this cave.

I remembered one sentence from the MacLean survey publication…

“Unfortunately, our sightings of penguins […] suggest little relationship between the number of birds on a beach or in the water and the number nesting.”

Of course you don’t expect them to breed in bloody submerged sea caves! If you look for conventional breeding sites – like I would have too until today – you will end up with a considerable discrepancy between birds in the open and nests found.

The submarine cave an hour (!) before high tide

But Tawaki take the term “cryptic breeder” to a new level. The cave I was in, was quite suitable to hide a veritable pirate’s treasure. I would have never, ever looked down here if it wasn’t for the calls I heard.

I was – and still am – truly awestruck by these penguins. How they manage to find caves suitable for breeding even below the waterline is pretty amazing. Not to mention that they manage to raise chicks in complete darkness. They must have amazing eye sight. Surely light too faint to be registered by the human eye must penetrate the cave.

Seeing two chicks was enough for me to assume that at least two nests were in this cave. I did not want to cause too much of a stir and retreated rather than pushing ahead to have a look round the corner. I left the cave. I wanted to check the rocks on the other side of Golden Beach.

In the next couple of hours, Hotte and I found and checked five more caves occupied by tawaki on a stretch of no more than 200m of coastline… ranging from large amphitheatres to the narrowest tunnels that even a child could not crawl into. In three of the caves I saw chicks, the other two were impossible to check without a burrowscope or some such. With the two chicks in the submarine cave I saw a total of 6 chicks, although I am certain that there were more in the farther reaches of some of the cave systems.

Now, it’s a moot point to try use our mini-survey to estimate the number of breeding tawaki along Stewart Island’s Northeast coast. But considering the many caves between Halfmoon Bay and Gull Rock I would not be surprised if we had some 50 breeding pairs on that stretch of the coast alone. And that is probably an underestimate.

The MacLean survey recorded 32 tawaki for Stewart Island. If anything this must be an underestimate by at least an order of a magnitude. If not more.

Wow.

Little cave family

I am relieved. We found tawaki in the water. And lots of them. And exactly where I said we would find them. So my job is basically done. After the relative penguin-scarcity we had experienced on our random walk tour yesterday, we managed to get out to Gull Rock today. It was still quite bouncy but Ida-san managed to sleep through another potential bout of sea sickness.

It was a cold day though. And the wind blew pretty hard, first still from the North but then from the West. And it rained. A lot. All in all not a pleasant mix to be standing on the deck of the Stingray to look out for penguins.

But we did not really have to.

Approaching Bungaree Bay

When we approached Bungaree Bay we could see a considerable feeding flock of white-fronted terns feeding off Gull Rock.

“That’s where we need to go”, I said to Morgan. But considering that it was too choppy to go out in the dinghy let alone dive, we decided to head into calmer waters of the bay to prepare the equipment and get Hongo and Haruki-san ready for diving.

Prepping sinfully expensive underwater filming gear in the sheltered waters of Bungaree Bay

At around lunchtime we headed back out. Getting closer to high tide, the waves had settled quite a bit and it looked a lot calmer generally. As soon as Gull Rock came into view, we spotted once again a large group of terns dive bombing into the water.

“There’ll be penguins” I proclaimed and Morgan replied “Then that’s where we go.”

Well, not only did it turn out that I was right, but that I was super-right because there easily 30-40 tawaki foraging around Gull Rock amidst a true dive bombing staccato of white-fronted terns and Sooty shearwaters.

Some smaller groups of tawaki were rather close to the boat, others a bit further away. Some groups were obviously foraging where birds spent little time at the surface before they disappeared again, while others were resting and just sitting on the surface like ducks in a pond.

A huge weight was taken off my shoulders. I have gotten the guys their diving tawaki. I had kept my promise and done my job. Now they had to do theirs.

And this is where it started to get really, really complicated.

And so it begins – a rubber dinghy in pursuit of ever elusive tawaki

It wasn’t that it took Luke, Hongo and Haruki-san long to get the gear and themselves into the rubber dinghy. It wasn’t even that they did not manage to get closer to some of the groups of penguins. No, the problem was that as soon as one or two of the Japanese camera men had entered the water that the penguins disappeared.

Hongo and Haruki-san would clamber back into the dinghy and Luke drove them off to the next group of dive-bombing terns for that was where the penguin now were. For the next hour or so the dinghy just zoomed from here to there only to find the penguins gone once camera men and gear were in the water.

A tawaki doing its thing popping up behind the backs of the camera men

While the dinghy was doing its thing the tawaki would show up next to the Stingray looking up at us (or as I had the feeling, particularly at Ida-san) as if laughing to our faces. It was a slick performance by the birds, as cool and composed as Leonardo Di Caprio in “Catch Me If You Can” while Ida-san got more and more frustrated trying to direct the dinghy form here to there by waving his arms frantically. I reckon he outdid Tom Hanks by at least a mile in his desperate demeanour.

After the tide had turned fewer and fewer penguins seemed to be around. However, more and more fairy prions showed up and by 2 o’clock some 300 of the tiny petrels were hovering directly above the sea surface around our boat, ducking their heads into the water to check for prey and then disappearing below for a quick feeding dive.

Fairy prions not on the film maker’s agenda today

I would say that must have looked pretty spectacular from below the surface. But Ida-san is here to get Di Caprio aka the penguins and the beauty of great numbers of fairy prions diving in tightly packed groups eluded him completely.

Ida Hanks looking out for Leonardo Di Tawaki

As the tide got stronger the waves started to make finding Tawaki difficult for the guys on the dinghy. The frequent downpours did their thing to complicate things even further. Ida-san weathered any changing condition at the stern of the Stingray trying to direct the dinghy from here to there. But the guys out there probably did not even see him. They just kept on zooming hither, thither and wither. Very infrequently one of them would go in the water only to be picked up by Luke a minute later after an obviously unsuccessful splash.

At around 6pm they gave finally up. Not a single second of underwater footage was recorded. Hongo and Haruki-san had hardly used any of the air in their tanks. When I asked Hongo about the deepest depth he reached his reply was “30 centimetres”.

And when I asked him if he had seen any of the penguins underwater he said “Yes, one. For 0.5 seconds.”

Rainbow over Gull Rock

We steamed back to town. The weather is supposed to improve somewhat tomorrow, especially the swell should be a lot better with little wave action if any.

This morning I found myself with the rest of the film crew on the wharf at around 8am. The Stingray was ready to go. But Luke looked at Ida-san with a bit of urgency and said “Well, the conditions out there are pretty rough. I wouldn’t go out fishing in this.”

He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder roughly in the direction of the Foveaux Strait. Granted, it did not look rough from where we were. But looks can be deceiving a Halfmoon Bay is pretty sheltered in most conditions.

Looks can be deceiving so better listen to the skipper.

“It’s blowing straight westerly so we will have the waves hitting us broad side if we go out to Gull Rock today” he said and added “Believe me. It will not be pleasant.”

Now, I for one would have thought that if a Stewart Island fisherman says it is too rough that was reason enough to come up with an alternative plan for the day. Especially since the conditions are forecasted to improve from tomorrow on.

But for some reason Ida-san decided to do another recce to Gull Rock regardless. What he hoped to find there in three metre swells will remain his secret, because currently he is in no condition to speak. He is pale as a sheet and sits hunched in the corner of the Stingray’s galley.

As soon as the Stingray had steamed out of Halfmoon Bay and Morgan at the helm had turned the boat to the north towards Bungaree Bay and Gull Rock, the swell hit us broad side. Exactly as promised. The boat started to bounce and sway violently. Morgan and Luke kept on chatting while the boat rolled and sent gear flying through the wheel house. The two Ida-sans – sorry, Ida-san and Haruki-san -,  Sam and Hongo had squeezed themselves in behind the galley bench and tried to hold on to what ever they could find. Which mainly was the guy sitting next to them. I stood behind Luke trying to balance the violent boat movements as best as I could.

Ida-san did not listen. Bouncy ride outside Halfmoon Bay.

We just got around Horseshoe Point when two extreme broadsides hit us. The engine whined and the boat rolled far enough so that I could almost stand upright on the wall. Ida-san slipped off the bench and found himself sitting in front of the Diesel stove.

What really astounded me though was that he started to crawl out onto the aft-deck. The waves kept washing over the deck no doubt soaking Ida-san to the bone. Ida-san grabbed the railing and started to feed the fish in a rather violent, explosive manner. When ever the boat rolled over to the side he was standing he came precariously close to being completely submerged in the water washing onto deck.

Luke immediately ordered Morgan to turn around. I don’t think that at this stage Ida-san had any objections.

We decides to steam into smoother waters of the sheltered Patterson Inlet to see if we would spot Little penguins or even Yellow-eyed penguins. It was a relief to be able to stand upright again.

Getting into smoother waters of Paterson Inlet

The Stingray chugged along, entering the islands in the south eastern reaches of the inlet known as the Bravo Group. It is where a good number of Yellow-eyed penguins breed. But, alas, the birds were out on a mission and nowhere to be seen. Same applied to Little penguins.

I mentioned that a friend had told me he had once seen tawaki somewhere around  The Neck, a narrow stretch of sand dunes that connect a small peninsula at the southern entrance of Patterson Inlet to the mainland. Luke called a few locals on his cellphone and asked for permission to land there. His idea was to walk over to the other side of the neck to look for penguins form land. It would give Ida-san some time off the boat and hopefully get some colour back in his face.

Morgan dropped us off with the dinghy and then headed off to pick us up with the Stingray on the other side of The Neck an hour later.

The Stingray under foreboding skies

The Rakiura Maori have established a walkway that provides some breath-taking views of the Patterson Inlet, the Titi islands out in Foveaux Strait and the South-eastern coastline of Stewart Island. I have never been out here, so it was a really nice side trip for me.

Views of Paterson Inlet and Fovaux Strait from The Neck

We even saw a few Little penguins from up here.

An hour later we were back on the boat and steamed to a small rocky outcrop in one of the bays where we had spotted a feeding flock of sooty shearwaters. The black seabirds landed on the water and ducked under the surface staying down for quite some time before re-emerging and gracefully taking flight again. I peered through my binoculars but could not see any penguins in amongst the action.

Since we had nothing better to do we decided to anchor and wait a while to see if penguin would show up at that rock.

They didn’t. Instead the weather packed in and it started to rain so that everyone and their dogs crammed themselves into the Stingray’s wheel house. Too crowded for me so I retreated down into bow section made myself comfortable on one of the two bunks.

And now, I am going to take a nap.

***

Well, not much else to report. After nearly three hours of waiting with nothing but a single Yellow-eyed penguin that surfaced exactly once to see, we headed back into town.

I have the feeling that apart from still suffering from the effects of his seasickness, Ida-san is a bit concerned about the outcome of today. What if the weather is that bad the entire time we’re here? Unlikely but it’s springtime and it can always turn bad in no time. But I think what he is really worried about, is that we hardly saw any penguins.

Or is it me who is worried? I mean we’re here because I said that if there’s one place where they could film tawaki under water it would be Stewart Island.

Ah, she’ll be right.

After a night in an obscenely large unit of a motel in Invercargill – I had a two floor unit with four beds for myself (the requirement for each member of the film crew to have his own unit is something that never ceases to amaze me) – our troupe drove down to Bluff where we got on board the 9.30am ferry to Stewart Island.

We arrived in Oban, the main settlement on the island, a mere hour later. We were just in time for the rain to set in which made transferring the equipment which had been shipped over in seven large bins (in other words: loads and loads of gear) a real joy.

Luke Simeon, a bearded guy with a dark complexion and green eyes, waited for us with a flat bed truck and helped shuttling the massive amount of gear to the hotel. Luke is a commercial Paua diver and crayfisherman. His fishing boat Stingray will be our floating base and has ample room to store all the diving equipment and filming gear. His fishing buddy Morgan will be acting skipper on Luke’s boat given that Luke potentially will spent considerable amount of time in the water with the two camera men.

In theory that would sum up the day adequately, if it wasn’t for what came out during the dinner I had with the crew at the hotel restaurant.

Now, one thing that I feel was a bit of an issue these last days, was that I spent hardly any time with the guys outside after our daily work in the field. Since the return of the film crew, I had hardly spent time with them outside the field. The days were too long and we always left early in the morning and returned late at night. So we had pretty little time to a chat over breakfast or dinner about what was going on and how we would continue the work.

So in a sense here on Stewart Island we had the first evening the team spent together since the crew returned from Japan. Finally some time to catch up on the things that happened in the past week and which are planned for the next few days.

Just to avoid confusion from here on: we have finally found a solution for our double Ida-san problem (i.e. the director vs the cameraman). We call Ida-san (the cameraman) by his first name, which makes him Haruki-san.

Anyhow, there we were having the first proper dinner together and Haruki-san asked me how deep Tawaki would dive (Sam translated.)

‘We don’t really know yet, but we will find out next year, when we will have dive loggers’, I replied.

Haruki-san raised his eyebrows. “But you have devices on the birds. I saw it.”

“Yes”, I replied. “But this year we have only GPS loggera available that do not record dive depths. We got the last logger back a couple of weeks… hang on… you saw what?!?”

“When I was filming in the forest. A bird with a logger on the back came walking up the path. I filmed it so we can show you.”

My jaw hit the table in astonishment. He had seen the final missing logger bird! He had even filmed it for me!! And I only find out about it by accident days later when we are on Stewart Island??? I turned to Sam.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell Haruki-san about the logger. So he didn’t know what to do”, Sam apologised who I had instructed to brief all the team members about our final logger bird up on Hilltop. They were to give me a call the moment they saw the bird.

Guess my instructions got lost in translation. Doh!

Well, opportunity lost. At least I know what to do when we get back to Haast – sit in the forest to catch our last missing logger bird.

Off we go down South. Our team will travel down to Invercargill today to catch the first ferry to Stewart Island tomorrow.

Next item on the list – underwater filming off tawaki off the Anglem coast.

I should use my superlatives more carefully. Because if yesterday’s swell was impressive, the waves that shook Jackson Head today were tremendous!

However, when I first came to the Wharekai Te Kou walk car park I could only suspect that. I dropped off Hongo-san and Kamai at the car park – the Ida-sans and Sam were today on a penguin safari with Gerry Sweeney up North. I headed back to Neil’s Beach. I had to pick up a couple of sleeping bags I forgot in the Dibbens residence when we left a couple of weeks ago. I had a quick chat with Jimbo, a fishermen and owner of the Backpackers next door, and then I headed further down the road to have a quick chat with Geoff Robson.

I was all geared up and ready to do my daily boulder hopping routine to our study site about 2 hours before high tide. The tramp along the rocky shore is never really easy, but today this turned out to be more difficult than I thought. That there weren’t any penguins on the shore should have given me an indication what I was getting myself into.

Impressive, foaming beasts pounding down on Jackson Head

The tide was coming in and combined with the heavy swell it created freak waves at regular intervals. Very short intervals. While finding my way from rock to rock I also kept an eye out on the approaching waves. Whenever one of these monsters seemed to just grow rather than break I had to seek refuge behind some rock and wait for the short moment of mayhem that would ensue.

With an enormous thunder, the wave would break straight onto the rock, creating a white wash that would leap over rocks at an alarming pace. Most of the time I was lucky and only my gumboots ended up in a shallow swirl of white water. But in the 10 minutes it took me to get to my cave, two waves got me good. Crouching behind a rock the wave would wash over my shelter leaving me briefly inside an enclosed water cave that would collapse around me, water raising up to my thighs. It was dangerous being out here.

And the penguins knew it.

I had barrels of adrenalin rushing through my system when I finally dragged myself into the amazingly dry cave. No sign of Butch or Ahab. Just the thunder of monster waves crashing onto the shore, occasionally sending tremors through the rocks I was sitting on.

Here I stayed for the next few hours. The tide rose and rose, and the waves got bigger and reached higher up the shore. Only my cave was miraculously spared from the wild floods. After high tide, I spotted the first penguins trying to land.

Looking for a way in

When their attempts to get ashore were impressive yesterday, today it seemed like sheer madness. Again and again the birds would get close to the rocks or even attempt to get a foothold only to be violently washed away again by another wave. But always they would pop up again in the white water of the wave’s surge. I timed a few of the landing attempts. The longest lasted 42 minutes after which the bird eventually giving up and disappeared again in the depths of the ocean.

However, a lot of birds made it somehow. And for every successful landing I gave a loud cheer. I was thoroughly impressed how such small a bird could not only withstand the brutal force of nature but actually outsmart vicious waves that seemed to have a mind of their own.

A human would have had no chance down there. For the penguins it’s a mere nuisance.

“On second thought, I might as well postpone that bath until tomorrow…”

Around 6pm penguins started to appear on the rocks around my cave again. One of them was Ahab. And as if to reinforce the fact that I chose the right name for the guy, he started to beat up one of the female penguins that had just landed after a 30-minute ordeal.

Now, the aggressive behaviour in crested penguins has always astounded me. While during the early breeding period, fights for mates and nest sites seem to make sense, it is the countless attacks particularly on females by non-breeders that seemingly do not serve any purpose. Pure hooliganism. And Ahab’s behaviour clearly fell into that category.

He would walk up to the female bump into her with his breast and then peck her in the neck trying to grab the skin and twist it. If he successfully latched on to her neck he would start to bring down a staccato of flipper beats on her back.

The purpose of this exercise? None other than solidifying Ahab’s image as a tough bugger.

The female, of course, wasn’t stupid and simply moved on leaving Ahab behind who shook his head and looked somewhat forlorn. I have to say I did not feel particularly bad for him.

Another interesting observation was a juvenile penguin that trotted after an adult up the rocks towards the breeding area. Now that in itself is not that an unusual a sight since a few days now. However, this juvenile was a bit different. It had a white beard. On first sight I wondered whether we a different species, a Chinstrap penguin perhaps, had made it to the West Coast. But of course a peek through my binoculars revealed the short yellow crests and the clumsy movements of a tawaki juvenile.

Wanna-be Chinstrap penguin

The rain never really stopped all day. But it turned to drizzle in the late afternoon. Of course, mixed with the vast amounts of spray in the air it was still enough to get you wet in seconds.

And that accurately describes the state I was in when I climbed up to the apartment block to watch tonight’s play. As yesterday, it is quickly summarized.

Nothing happened.

Hongo-san and Kamai packed up all valuable gear and secured the cables as we would not return for the next week and a half. Loaded with gear we got back to the car park just before 10pm.

Wow! Yesterday’s swell was good, but today it was impressive. Huge wave monsters stormed towards Jackson Head and crashed with a thunder onto the rocks when we headed out to the site just around lunchtime. Although it was still 3 hours until high tide, it was really difficult to get through without being washed off the rocks.

That would make for some rough landings for the tawaki returning to feed chicks today. And these waves offered such a dramatic scenery, that I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Ida-san (the director) would order Ida-san (the camera man) to film how small penguins battled big waves.

But Ida-san did no such thing. Instead Hongo-san assumed his usual post at the apartment block while Ida-san and Ida-san tried to get footage of penguins walking in the forest.

Isn’t that a wasted opportunity?, I wondered. But then, I am no film maker.

Ida-san (the director) went up with me and Sam to the scenic nest; he wanted to get footage of penguins arriving in the Hilltop colony. As soon as he assumed his post above the gully that the penguins climbed up, it started to rain (although “rain” is too neat a word to adequately describe the amount of waters that were dumped on top of us).

Yes, Bunnings umbrellas go a long way on the West Coast

Sam and I headed downhill again to place some action cameras along the penguin pathways in the kiekie further down the hill. We made it as far as Ida-san (the camera man).

When we wanted to head past him, he signalled downhill with one hand. There were two Tawaki standing on the trail looking sceptically up at Ida-san who had built himself a make-shift hide out of two Bunnings Warehouse umbrellas.

Sam and I dropped behind some bushes and waited.

10 minutes passed. The penguins did not move. With no canopy to speak of above me my ageing Oringi gear was all that protected me from the almost tropical-strength downpour (minus the corresponding air temperature, that is). In short I felt really uncomfortable after a very short time. I had to move or I would get cold.

Their rain gear was definitely more water proof than ours – tawaki with lots of time

Sam, who had hidden behind a fern on the other side of the penguin trail seemed to have crept into his GoreTex jacket, was unresponsive to my gesticulations trying to tell him I had to move. I moved anyway. I made it to the creek that ran through a steep gully to my left and got down to the shore. It was raining mackerel and trout. As fast as I could I moved to my cave hide out.

Once in the cave I started to worry about Sam. The problem with Sam is that his way finding skills are not too flash. And with me sneaking off to get out of the rain he would have no one to guide him out of the forest once the penguins had moved past Ida-san (the camera man). To make matters worse, Sam’s radio seemed to be dead as I could not raise him via my walkie-talkie.

Aw, come one, it’s the middle of the day, he’ll be fine, I said to myself but deep down inside I knew that wasn’t really how I felt.

A couple of hours later my radio crackled “Sam to Thomas.”

“Go ahead.”

“Oh, I am with Hongo-san. I finally found the tent I got lost for an hour.”

Oh bugger, it had to happen. Sam spent more than an hour lost in the bush, getting tangled up in kiekie and always ending up where he started before he finally managed to find his way back to the apartment block.

I left my cave and climbed up the ropes to meet Sam at the director’s tent. Sam looked a bit shaken but as fine otherwise. I promised him not to leave him behind anymore and we both headed down to the creek area to finally deploy the action cameras.

First we climbed into the kiekie next to the rock arenas. Quite obviously a lot of penguins used a tunnel through the tangle of vines – a perfect spot for one of the cameras. We climbed into what henceforth will be known as the “kiekie tunnel” to set the cameras. While Sam was busy placing the device a penguin came down the tunnel, walked up to me and ducked under my legs apparently oblivious of the fact that I was not part of the vegetation.

After both cameras were in place we headed down to the rocks again where we spent the rest of the afternoon watching penguins land in the surf which was still considerable despite the progressing low tide. While it was still impressive to watch single tawaki land in conditions that can only be described as spin program of a washing machine that forgot to drain the suds first.

Gahg! I’m out of here!

Sam and Ida-san (the camera man) headed back to town around 8pm, while I remained behind with Hongo-san and Ida-san (the director) to watch tonight’s play up at the apartment block. Where really nothing happened in nearly 3 hours.

It was going on midnight when we finally headed out to the car park.

My view from the cave. Of course the rain had to stop briefly while I was taking this image.

I’m not sure if I’m sitting or lying in this narrow cave in the rocks just below the ropes up to the Apartment Block. It doesn’t really matter because it is uncomfortable. Luckily I have an entertaining companion. A juvenile tawaki has joined me and takes an interest in my Oringi jacket, which is soaking wet because outside our little abode it has been bucketing down for most of the day. From huge buckets, I might add.

Outside our cave, penguins try to land in rather rough conditions; some of them take ages to finally make it. I don’t blame them.

Tawaki always try to land halfway between break and surge of a wave. This one almost made it.

Good waves crash onto the rocks which should make for dramatic filming by the Japanese film crew. Originally the idea was that I keep an eye out on the ocean to tell Ida-san (the cameraman) when penguins arrive. But his radio is not working and mine is out of juice so I just sit and wait and supervise. And enjoy the company of the young penguin.

Even though he’s just over a year old, his size and his considerable honker identifies him as a male. Despite his butch appearance – quite a fitting name, Butch –  his behaviour is positively child-like, all curiosity, carelessness and a bit of clumsiness.

Butch nibbling on my rain jacket.

I think I have seen Butch a few times already these last couple of days. He seems to be hanging out in this part of Jackson Head. One of the many juveniles I have seen since returning to Jackson Head. And now he’s disappearing through a crack in the back of our cave. See ya, later.

It’s going on 6pm, so roughly another 2.5 hours to sunset and another 5 hours until we head back to town. Hongo-san will again try film the nightly chick feeding and socialising up at the apartment block. If it is not raining I will again assume my place up in the tree above Hongo-san’s hide tent and enjoy the show.

Butch comes back. For a member of a species that is said to be very timid and does not like the presence of humans, Butch is rather oblivious of this fact. He is again busy with my rain jacket and finally loses interest, wanders around my legs and hops out of the cave.

https://vimeo.com/112613971

The beach has become rather busy now with penguins landing in a considerable surf, like getting out of a washing machine that’s running its main cycle. Most of the birds then clamber up to the rocks just below Butch’s and my cave.

Penguins outside of Butch’s and my cave

That strange thing is that the penguins do not seem to notice me even though I am in clear view a mere meter away from them. If is because I am lying on my back or is it the notebook that hides an important feature for them to recognize me as a potential threat?

Rather than doing their usual alert head bobbing the birds just stand there and preen before heading off further uphill.

Now here is an interesting visitor. He – another male by the looks of his bill – has arrived on the scene. At first I thought I had a discoloration of his check feathers on the left side of his face. But upon closer inspection it turns out to be scar that runs in a slight arch and is about 5 cm long. I’m not sure if the missing feathers are an indication of a recent injury. But, hang on, he just turned a bit so that now I see his left flipper and there is a rather knotty scar at its base. The penguin straightens his body and shakes his head sending many little droplets flying around. He flaps his wings quite normally so no permanent damage to his flipper.

Introducing Ahab – scar across the face but no whale bone peg leg

The bird looks positively rugged, like a veteran of a lost battle. There you have it, a second time today a name pops into my mind. Ahab.

I am usually not the type of guy who gives his study subjects names. To me this is something you to someone or something that is in a way yours, like your kids or a pet. I admire the penguins I work with and I may feel really close to individuals I am in contact with for weeks on end. But they are not “mine” (that’s also why I always try to avoid to call the birds I work with “my” penguins).

He relaxes, presses his flippers to his body and actually starts to doze off. And now I can see both the scar on his face and his flipper and it seems that both form opposing arches – bite marks most likely. What could it have been? A shark? No, they have razor sharp teeth that cut very clean and do not leave such knotty scars like the one on the flipper. No, my guess would be either a sea lion or a fur seal.

https://vimeo.com/112614602

But this one is just Ahab. Although I doubt that this penguin holds a manic grudge against his attacker but is happy to be still alive without an urge for revenge. In fact, it looks like he’s having a snooze at the moment.

Thinking about it, Ahab must have had a run in with a fur seal. A sea lion would have finished him off with the first bite. But fur seals are generally not interested in penguins. Except when the birds are in their way.

On the Snares I once observed a fur seal that had particular rock in mind to have a nap. Problem was the rock was occupied by a Snares penguin that did not want to move but rather hissed at the fur seal. That, of course, was a bad idea as the seal simply grabbed the penguin by its head. But rather than gulping it down it just flung the penguin to the side and send him tumbling down the rocks. It looked like the animal version of dwarf-tossing. The penguin eventually got up and shook his head a couple of times and waddled off in a way that suggested he was mumbling curses and insults into his feathery beard as he left the scene humiliated.

Despite this, I still think Ahab is a good name for him.

Okay, I all alone now. And it is almost 7pm, so let’s head up and enjoy tonight’s play at the Apartment Block.

***

The play turned out to be extremely boring with nothing happening. I had assumed again my lookout in the tree above Hongo-san’s camera but all I watched tonight was mud oozing out of the cave in which the crèche of chicks was probably huddled together and fast asleep. A possum climbed down towards me getting one hell of a shock when it saw me. I guess human encounters in a tree are not every day business for a possum, least of all for one from Jackson Head West where human visitation is generally low.

To film something, Hongo-san turned his camera at the possum. And just to ruin his day a bit more all the possum could think of was to climb along the branches where the thick green and orange camera cables were tied up, looking like cyborg vines. “Hmm, not very natural” he said to me after the marsupial had disappeared into the night.

Because nothing else happened the wet and the cold started to creep into my bones. It seemed like ages until Ida-san finally called it a day and we packed up and headed back to town.

Sitting on a desk all day is quite nice sometimes, but usually I prefer field work. A lot. And today was a prime example why that is so.

For most of the day the weather was gorgeous. Hongo-san was back in business, the two Ida-san’s and Sam were back from filming Tawaki swimming in creeks. Today they wanted to get footage of penguins landing on the beach and making their way up to the colonies.

Of course they are lucky as at the moment, a lot more penguins land on Jackson Head than there are breeders. That’s because a lot of young birds – juveniles and pre-breeders (according to Warham Tawaki start to breed when 5-7 years old) – are returning from almost 10 months at sea. So the traffic on the beach is considerable.

The two Ida-sans have moved a bit further along the rocky shore to one of the busiest landings some 200 metres past our rope ascent to the Apartment block. At first I wasn’t sure about them filming there as there seemed to be an awful lot of fur seals there. But when I checked the area I could confirm that these were just male animals that had a rest in the spring sun. And pretty much unlike your ordinary fur seal, they did not mind the camera man and documentary director at all. Instead they actually posed, staged a bull fight and generally gave the guys a great show to ban on film (or rather hard disks).

I spent most of the afternoon sitting high up on a rock overlooking Jackson Head West. Had the penguin traffic in the previous weeks been a bit slow an restricted to the main colony access points, the Tawaki now landed around us anywhere and at any time. As far as one could see we’d spot penguins preening, hopping on the rocks or just dozing in the sun.

Dozing in the evening sun (actually, this guy might be fast asleep)

As it was getting darker I decided to head up to the Apartment block to have a look at Hongo-san’s filming efforts there. He wanted to give filming with artificial lights a go. I had agreed to that because if one thing became clear in the past weeks then that when it’s dark Tawaki could not care less about being in the spotlight of a head torch. It’s as if they don’t eve perceive the artificial light.

It was already quite gloomy up in the forest and Hongo-san had just switched on a LED panel that illuminated the Apartment Block. Only problem was that there weren’t any penguins in sight. The chicks and guarding adults were all back in the cave and none of the parents had returned yet to feed their chicks.

I clambered up the slope to where Hongo-san had squeezed himself and his enormous camera into the tent hide. I looked around and thought that the almost horizontal branch above and a bit behind the tent hide would make an excellent perch and vantage point to observe the show. I quietly climbed up the tree and found a really comfortable position up there. The Apartment block lay like a stage in front of me. Now we just had to wait until the prelude was over and the play would commence.

The view from my perch onto the illuminated stage in front of the Apartment Block

At first not a lot happened. A chick was heard issuing begging calls somewhere from the depths of the kiekie at the top of the Apartment block. The high pitched “weep-weep-weep” in my opinion was enough to make any caring living being want to regurgitate some food. Apparently the adult penguins that certainly were present somewhere in the shadows thought otherwise.

Yet the stage remained deserted. From time to time I saw some movement in front of Hongo-san’s tent hide, but it always turned out to be the lens of the 4K camera moving this way or that way to film the vast emptiness of the lit Apartment block.

After about an hour of sitting and waiting and just letting the mind drift, a male Tawaki waddled out of the overhanging kiekie leafs that covered the left side of the Apartment block like a stage curtain. He moved to the centre of the stage in the slender walk posture that is so commonly seen in Snares penguins – both flippers pointing forwards with a craned neck as if the penguin wanted to duck under some hidden obstacle. Then suddenly he stopped, stretched his neck and looked to the left, looked to the right, stood like that motionless for a few seconds. And then, as if he realised that no other penguin was watching his shoulders dropped, the flippers relaxed and he retracted his head looking slightly bedraggled. After a while he shook his body and moved off to disappear behind the kiekie again.

It started to feel as if the penguins suffered from a case of stage fright. So far they seemed to prefer to stay behind the kiekie curtains or the depth of the backstage area which was the cave. But around 10pm they got over that and the show finally started.

First a couple of chicks, their downy brown baby suits smothered in mud, wandered out of the cave and onto the stage. They apparently aimlessly moved from one side to the other and back until they finally seemed to have honed in on their destination and settled at their respective nest sites. There they sat and waited, occasionally flapping their wings that looked at least a couple of sizes too long despite the fact that the chicks were already quit big. T

Then a female tawaki arrived from the front left and entered the lit area. Its plumage was still wet and without hesitation it headed to chick number which immediately started begging with a high pitched peeping and rhythmic head shakes. The female gave a short but sharp trumpeting display to quickly turn her attention to her chick. To indicate its readiness for food it brought its head upwards from below her bill which required quite some contortion skills on the chick’s behalf as it was almost as tall as its mother. She opened her bill and the chick did not hesitate to poke what looked like its entire head into her mother’s throat.

Whenever I see penguins feed their chicks I do value the human way of feeding babies. Just imagine Mums would have to pre-digest and then vomit up the food for their offspring. What a mess this would create.

However, nothing was wasted here. The chick emerged again from its mother’s gape and both raised their heads to gulp down the bits and pieces that remained in their mouths. I peered through my binoculars in the hope to see what kind of food was transferred between mother and child, but not even a trace of the regurgitated meal was visible. Not 15 seconds after the feeding was completed the chick started begging again and the whole process was repeated. All in all I counted 7 feeding events before the mother decides to move of her nest and start preening right in front of Hongo-san’s camera.

Hongo-san was happy. Not long after the feeding show was over I saw him put the lens cap onto is camera and crawl out of the tent hide. He stretched his back looked up and saw me in the dim light of the LED panel sitting up the tree and released a piercing cry “HAAII!!” Apparently he had not expected to see me – or any other life-form – perched high up in the tree above him. His flight instinct almost made him jump of the ledge and down into the darkness but he gained control again and mumbled something like “Ohh, you scared me”.

Yet another form of stage fright, I thought.

Well, this day is quickly summarised. Ida-san (the director), Ida-san (the camera man) and Sam headed North to meet up with Gary Sweeney, owner of the Tawaki Lodge who took them to a secret place where Tawaki swim up a creek to get to their nest sites. I, Hongo-san and Kamai were supposed to go to Jackson Head and film at the Apartment Block.

But Hongo-san decided to get sick and just felt too miserable to go to work. So we stay at the Hotel where I will spend the rest of the day in front of the tiny desk in my room and do some computer work.

Hello desk.