Research Diary

On our second day out on East Shelter Island, it was the 18 February, we managed to deploy satellite tags on five tawaki. The first two likely candidates were hanging out in a root cave together. One of the penguins was a male with an impressive bill, the other one a female with a determined look. The birds were huddled up together side by side and sitting in what obviously was an active nest only a few weeks ago.

You did not have to be a penguin expert to quickly assume that we had run into a pair that moulted together in last season’s nest. Successful breeders tend to come back to moult in their nests, primarily to show nosy neighbours or young punks that this site is taken. Even when we extracted the female to fit her with a satellite tag, the male did not move.

Of course, we couldn’t pass up the chance to deploy satellite tags on a pair. So once the epoxy had dried on the female’s device, it was the male’s turn to be fitted with a tag. The female peeped out of the burrow while we were attaching the device, obviously interested to have a look at the procedure we went through from the outside. They both were reunited in their nest sporting sat tags 197041 and 197042.

Of all the tawaki that we had to come up with names for during this study, those two were the easiest. The similarities between the two penguins and the Tawaki Project’s hosts in Doubtful Sound/Patea were almost uncanny.

Mandy and Richard ‘Abbo’ Abernathy own and run Fiordland Expeditions that provide sharter cruise services throughout Fiordland. Abbo takes care of the skippering business, while Mandy looks after the books and catering. Abbo, the penguin, is a somewhat rotund male while Mandy, the penguin, came across as rather curious and observant. Indeed, quite comparable to their human counterparts.

Both penguins remained together for a few days after the deployment, then Abbo left on the 22 February. Mandy spent another five days, probably to make sure the books of their nesting operation were in order, before she too left on her journey on 27 February.

Abbo left Doubtful Sound in a westerly direction but over the first week arched round to the South, as if swimming along a quarter circle. When he reached about 50° South, he changed course and headed west-southwest until reached is current position some 1,200 km south of Tasmania.

Amazingly, when Mandy left, she travelled along almost the exact same arc as Abbo had done five days before her. Mandy changed course, just as Abbo did, at around 50° South and has literally been hot on Abbo’s tail ever since. So far, the two penguins’ travel paths are incredibly similar especially when you consider the variability we see in the other tawaki’s movements.

Coincidence? Or perhaps, the pair bond between Abbo and Mandy, that transcends the 500 km of ocean that currently separates them.

Let’s talk about ‘normal moulters’. The great book of penguins claims that the birds generally return to their breeding colonies to go through their annual feather change. In tawaki, this may or may not be. There are a lot of birds the moult on the East coast of New Zealand’s South Island, and the last few days we introduced you to quite a few of them. However, there a no tawaki breeding on this side of the South Island. Perhaps they are young birds that haven’t bred yet, and quite a few like Tereza, Jill and Velma seem to fit that bill.

In the third week of February, we made it to the Shelter Islands at the entrance of Doubtful Sound/Patea, Fiordland. More specifically, on 17 February we landed on East Shelter Island that we had visited on a recce trip last September. And we found it full of tawaki.

The island itself is a nightmare to move around. The forest is packed to the brim with supplejack vines that sling themselves around body parts and backpacks with glee. And a lot of the moulting tawaki seem to be running around freely in this mess. They hang out in small groups and are very mobile. So, finding a likely candidate for a satellite deployment was a bit of daunting task to start with.

Until we came across a pair that were hanging out in dirt cave under a massive tree root. The female looked at us incredulously and was visibly confused when we picked her up to attach a device. Her apparent mate, evidently a truly gallant hero, buggered off and was nowhere to be found henceforth.

Shelley, as we quickly named the female as she was our first bird on Shelter Island, remained calm during the deployment period. She also maintained her confusion as to what had happened to her after we released her back into her dirt cave. In fact, as if to double check that what just happened really happened, she walked right back out towards us to give us a seriously befuddled look.

Shelley left the island early the next morning but returned after exploring the outer ranges of Doubtful Sound to spend another night at home. On 19 February she left Fiordland for good. For the first couple of weeks at sea, she followed the example of the East coast penguins in that she travelled in a south-westward direction.

But around 5th March she turned due west. She has been swimming along the 10-11°C water temperature isolines which mark the location of the Subtropical Front (STF) where warm subtropical water (10-20°) meets cool subantarctic water (4-10°C). This front is a physical barrier where penguin prey tends to accumulate – and which is the main region that closely related Snares penguins tend to go on their winter journeys.

Today, Shelley is about 450 km due south of Tasmania.

The first week of February was a pleasant one in Dunedin. Tereza Chudobova from the Czech Republic had been in the region for some time and, amongst other things, had volunteered with Yellow-eyed penguin/hoiho work. So Tereza had a keen eye for penguins. That pleasant weekend, she decided to try to climb around the basalt column wonderland at Blackhead, Dunedin, south of the city to reach the area called the Roman Baths. When she climbed up the first barrier of fallen basalt she noticed a small crested creature sitting in a cave, looking a bit drowsy and puffed up.

That night she informed Mel Young (with whom she had done the hoiho work) about the moulting tawaki, who, in turn, got in touch with Thomas. The photos that Tereza sent through showed that not only was the penguin a one-year old bird. It also was only beginning to moult so there was no urgency to go out and find her.

Thomas and Richard waited a week before they had a look for the tawaki. Equipped with all satellite tracking gear they scrambled out to the spot Tereza had described. The penguin was quickly located but, as it turned out, was still not quite ready with old feathers still dangling from various body parts.

The third weekend of February was another pleasant one in Dunedin. This time Thomas and Ursula tried her luck and they found the female penguin dozing in a small rock cave. Tereza, as the bird was named, was a quiet girl that did not object to getting a satellite tracker fitted. Within 20 minutes she was back in her cave.

And then she took her jolly time. For a week – Thomas and Richard made it to Doubtful Sound and back, more on that in the next few days – Tereza didn’t do anything. That is, here satellite tracker, programmed to start transmitting once she enters the water remained silent.

A week later, Thomas decided to have look for Tereza and went back out to Blackhead. He was not sure what to expect, but imagined that, if he was lucky, he’d find the satellite tag somewhere in or around Tereza’s cave; she wouldn’t have been the first penguin to preen off a satellite tag. But while he was still contemplating what to expect, he spotter Tereza walking across the rocks a few metres in front of him – tracker still attached. He snapped a quick photo and retreated so as not to spook Tereza.

She finally left the next morning. The next few days she travelled southwest along the continental shelf edge. When she was east of Stewart Island/Rakiura’s South Cape, Tereza went silent. And she hasn’t come back online.

What happened? Well, the most likely explanation is, that she managed to take off the device. Judging by the last photo of her, the device was already sitting somewhat skewed on her back as if she had been working on it for a while. Quite possible that the tracker was only attached to a few feathers by the time she went to sea. In this case, it doesn’t take much for water to loosen the remaining tape so that the device falls off.

On 4 February 2020, the DOC Otago regional office received an email from Jill Taylor living out at Doctor’s Point, a 20 minute-drive north of Dunedin. She was out on a rockpooling outing at the Maputahi Pa site, a rocky peninsula that once upon a time was the site of a small Maori fortress (‘pa’), when she came across a penguin looking rather bedraggled. She attached a few images to her email – showing a tawaki female halfway through the moult.

Jill was concerned about the safety of the bird due to the fact that people often take their dogs to the beach. DOC Otago on one hand busy with another poor hoiho penguin season and well aware that the Tawkai Project was looking for wild moulting tawaki, asked us to have a look and move the bird if necessary.

The next morning, Thomas drove over and had a low tide stroll to the rockpools at the eastern end of the peninsula. It did not take long to find the rock under which Jill had found the penguin on the previous day. Alas, the penguin was gone. Yet, by now we are quite used to the fact that tawaki are real pros at hide-and-seek, so Thomas started to look under rocks in the vicinity – to find the penguin in a reasonably deep and narrow cave, quite out of reach of any nosy dog. She still had a least two more weeks to go, so he left her where she was and was on his way.

Nine days later, after they had already fitted satellite tags to Katiki and Velma, Thomas and Richard walked out to the rockpools again. And there she was, in beautiful new plumage with a radiant blue sheen. Jill, named after her discoverer, proved to be just as gentle as Velma so that the deployment took just over 15 minutes. In no time, she was back in her cave and Thomas & Richard en route to a well-deserved beer after a busy day.

Jill left early the following morning. She has been on a south-western trajectory ever since. Interestingly, she also hit that food patch off the Catlins (like Sandy, Motley and Danny) although Jill was first on that party and had a go at whatever prey she found a day before the others even got there. Jill has been doodling around quite a few times since then.

She passed the Auckland Islands in early March and is currently about 320 km west of Macquarie Island.

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.

This is one big boy of a tawaki! Katiki was found moulting behind the toilet by the boat ramp at Shag Point, about a 45-minutes-drive north of Dunedin. This is another example of a penguin deciding to moult in a silly place. The boat ramp is used by fishermen that often have dogs with them. Despite Katiki being quite a portly representative of its species, he wouldn’t stand a chance if a canine decided to have play with him.

Vigilant residents notified Rosalie Goldsworthy of Penguin Rescue fame who took Katiki into her care at the Katiki Point Lighthouse.

The rest of the moult must have been a dream for the penguin with frequent meals, medical attention and his own private room (a pen, really). When Thomas and Richard arrived at Katiki Point on 13 February 2020 to fit the penguin with a satellite tag – the fourth rehabilitated bird – the penguin weighed a massive 4.1 kg. The heaviest post-moult (unassisted) tawaki on record was 3.6 kg on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island.
And Katiki proved to be a beast that gave his all to express his displeasure with being removed from his pen for a release on Okahau beach not far from the lighthouse. Hissing and biting, Katiki made sure this would be a memorable deployment for the researchers.

When, finally, he was released in what the humans thought would be a neat little nook for Katiki, he disagreed and waddled of across the beach to find his own spot. And there he remained for the next three days before taking the plunge in the morning of 16 February 2020.

In keeping with his body condition on release, Katiki proves to be a high-performance athlete amongst the tracked tawaki so far. Travelling at an average speed of 5km/h, he has already travelled more then 5000 km in the six weeks he is at sea. He did not doodle around like many of the other birds but seemed to be on a mission to be the first to reach the subantarctic region. He is the furthest away from New Zealand, currently some 1800 km south of Adelaide.

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.

Another penguin that came through the rehabilitation centre at Penguin Place, Motley is a repeat offender! This is the second moult in a for this tawaki ended up in rehab. In late summer 2019, he was picked up from Ryans Beach, one of the two bays surveyed by Penguin Place. Besides being underweight, he had foot injuries for which he was treated at the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital. After a full recovery and completed moult, he was released and disappeared into the big blue.

Until he showed up at Pilots Beach this summer beach that is across the Otago Peninsula from Ryans Beach. The area is frequented by anglers as well as the location of a tourism venue that offers little penguin spotting to paying customers. All in all, not the quietest place for a tawaki to complete the moult. So back to Penguin Place he went.

Hin soit qui mal y pense… surely Motley did not return this year because of his appreciation for the full catering services at Penguin Place?

He was ready to go on 12 February 2020 and became one of the three desperadoes to march straight off to the bushes rather head out to sea, Sandy and Danny being the other two heroes. But while Sandy started her journey the next day, Motley clearly had an affinity for Penguin Place.

He also hopped into the water on 13 February which triggered his satellite tag to start transmitting. But Motley was not ready yet to venture out into the great unknown. Instead for the next two days he explored the waters off the Otago Peninsula. However, on 15 February it dawned on him that more free fish wasn’t forthcoming from Penguin Place. So he started is winter journey that day.

Motley swam southwards keeping the New Zealand coastline in sight until he hit a spot off the Catlins that made him doodle around for a while, pretty much what Sandy had done a few days before him, a clear indication that both had met a patch of food.

And just like Sandy, Motley continued along the Snares rise, passed the Auckland Islands a couple of weeks into his trip. The past few days he swam a neat loop some 400 km due west of Macquarie Island.

In late January, beach goers visiting Sandy Point close to Invercargill in Southland, came across a miserable looking juvenile tawaki. While moulting tawaki generally are a sad sight to behold, the fact the people take their dogs to the area meant that this certainly wasn’t a safe spot for the penguin to moult.

On 23 January, the bird was taken to Penguin Place on the Otago Peninsula where she spent the final week of her moult in the company of several other penguins, notably a couple of other tawaki (Danny & Motley, more on them in a few days), a Snares penguin as well as a bunch of juvenile Yellow-eyed penguins/hoiho.

Throughout the moult she enjoyed a daily dose of fish, so that she weighed a massive (for a female tawaki) 3.1 kg by the time she had replaced all her feathers. On 1 February, Thomas and Richard received a call from Penguin Place that Sandy was ready to receive her satellite tracker as she was about to be released later that day.

Sandy would be the first of the “rehab” group of birds. The core premise of this year’s tracking study is to compare the behaviour of penguins that received assistance through the moult (i.e. food) with that of tawaki that moulted by themselves both on the East coast and in Fiordland.

Sandy was released at Pipikaretu Beach in the afternoon the same day. But rather than run into the sea and be off, she headed straight for the bushes and disappeared in the vegetation. And there she remained for the next 7 days.

On 7 January, Sandy was still hanging around on the beach and when weighed had dropped to 2.4 kg. Penguin Place decided to take her back in to put her on a few more days of food before releasing her together with the other two tawaki still in care.

On 12 January the trio were released on the beach. And rather than three desperadoes riding off into the sunset, the three penguins headed straight back to the bushes. But this time, Sandy did not linger much longer. In the morning of 13 January 2020, Sandy hopped into the water and was on her way.

So far, Sandy hasn’t been in particular hurry. First she doodle around for a few days just off the Catlins coast before traveling South along the eastern edge of the Snares Rise. About 180 km north of the Auckland Island, she had another doodling intermission before she continues westwards. The doodling is most likely a response to good feeding conditions. In the ocean, food is seldom evenly distributed but occurs in patches, be it krill or fish swarms.

At the moment, Sandy is about 800 km west of the Auckland Islands.

With New Zealand now going into full lock-down due to Covid-19 we here at the Tawaki Project will be confined to home office work for the foreseeable future. So plenty of time to tell you about those 18 tawaki that are currently carrying satellite trackers. Let’s start with Roxie.

The small female tawaki was a surprise penguin for us. Richard Seed and Thomas Mattern went to the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony in late January to inspect a tawaki that was moulting on their premises. That bird (Velma, more on her in a few days) was not quite ready to be fitted with a tag. So Thomas and Richard drove back to Dunedin.

Later that day, however, a post popped up on Facebook by BIRDS SITE NZ. They had spotted a tawaki in the rocks directly below the OBPC. The penguin was out for a drink and by the looks of it, already fully moulted.

So up to Oamaru Thomas and Richard went the next day again. The clambered down the rocks, keeping a troupe of young fur seals at bay, and found the tawaki dozing in the pack of a rock crevice. It took Richard a bit of Gymnastics to get the penguin out of its hole.

She was a small bird, in good nick and stunningly beautiful. The penguin also was very kind and cooperative when the satellite tag was fitted to its lower back. She was released back into her little nook about half an hour later. Only a few minutes after her release she was back out on the rocks again for a drink.

Roxie, as she was named by Philippa Agnew, research manager at the OBPC, spent one more night in Oamaru before she headed off into the big blue on 2nd February. At the time of this post, she has traveled past all the sub-antarctic islands and currently is about 1,500 km / 930 miles south of Oamaru, and less than 1,300 km / 800 miles from Antarctica. However, our guess is that she will head west fairly soon and follow the Polar Front, an oceanographic feature that separates cool sub-antarctic water from cold polar waters further south.