Penguins, seals and other creatures

I didn't really mention the penguins we saw the other day did I?

They are fascinating little creatures (my sister adores them) and the blue colony we went to see over in Oamaru the other night (but not allowed to photograph) spend the whole day out at see only swimming ashore each evening to check on their eggs and/or nests, preen their feathers to waterproof them and to socialize. Every night at dusk they swim in 'raft' formations towards the rocky shore- safety in numbers before awkwardly waddling, flapping and jumping up to reach the dry nesting territory. The larger yellow-eyed penguins are much rarer as we discovered after waiting over an hour on Bushy Beach only to see two come in.

The New Zealanders are certainly very protective of their rarer animals and unless you pay to join a guided tour it's hard to see them for yourself close up. We've been lucky enough to see a lot of fur seals however on the rocks around Bushy Beach, Shag Point and Matakaea on route to Dunedin.

On the flip-side of this, they regard possums, rabbits and all other wild European 'imports' as a pest and one sees scores of dead animals on the roads here. These could be anything from weasels to possums to ferrel cats to rabbits (and Ric swears he saw a squished hedgehog today), all of which were originally brought over here by humans, as once upon a time only birds and bats lived on this land with a few whales, dolphins and of course penguins in the seas around.

I'm uploading the pics on to Picasa as I type this. I've gone photo-crazy again.