Saturday 19th February. Hamden

Penguin on rocks

It rained overnight and was quite cool during the day. Nevertheless it was another day in paradise with the beach so near by. I could spend hours walking on the beach and sitting watching the sea in fact that is what I am doing here for much of the time! I walked up to the shop in the morning and had another chat with the owners there, such nice friendly people.
Our main plan for the day was to go to Moeraki lighthouse and see the rare yellow eyed penguins. They come back to their nests above the beach at any time between 5pm and dusk unlike other penguins who all wait until dusk. It was an interesting drive to the lighthouse the final few kilometres being on a gravel road. The path down to the hide is very steep, OK going down but quite a trek back up. Unlike the time I saw penguins in Australia this is not a commercial venture and there are not crowds of people there. In fact there were no more than half a dozen at any time. For the first hour or so we were the only people there. Not a lot was happening on the penguin front but there were lots of seals lying around and going in and out of the water. Finally one penguin appeared swimming in to shore and then waddling up the beach and starting the climb up the hill to his/her nest. It kept stopping to rest and appeared to be looking out to sea to see if it could see any others coming onto the beach. We had our binoculars and were fascinated to be able to watch it's progress. We stayed there for a couple of hours and saw another 6 come out of the sea and make their way back "home" A wonderful experience.