Protecting Penguins

Yesterday was a BEAUTIFUL day here in New Zealand!  I was thrilled to spend a day out on the peninsula at Natures Wonders to help put up predator-proof fencing.

These aren't your typical lions, tigers, and bears kind of predators, though.  They are loathed little critters like opossums, hedgehogs, rabbits and mice.  These introduced pests have been quite naughty, especially when it comes to albatross and penguin eggs.  The idea is to protect the land with the fence and eradicate the little buggers with poison.

The actual task at hand was pretty self-explanatory.  A group of students helped to staple down a "skirt" of fence with small holes onto a fence with bigger holes.  My job was lugging around rocks to weigh down the bottom edge of the fence so that grass could grow through and secure it in place.

Albatross Colony...

Transportation on the farm...

Perry Reider (owner) explaining how the fencing works...

Our task: go up the hill and down the other side with the new fencing...

A good portion done before lunch...

Ocean!!!

View of the Otago Harbour from where we were putting up fencing...

Perry's family owns all this land...

It's a fully operational sheep farm...

The sheep have a great view, huh?

We took a small break for lunch, and then it was back to work...

Not a bad view in the background...

So, Perry is very proud and passionate about his work and wool.  He wanted to share what it's like to do a tour of Nature's Wonders by demonstrating how to shear the wool off one of these sheep...

Perry showing us how they use the dog to herd sheep...

Blogger won't let me upload the video of the sheep getting sheared. Boooo!

I felt very fortunate that we had the opportunity to spend time at such a neat place for the day!  If anyone is looking for a neat activity for an afternoon, I'd definitely recommend a trip to visit Perry.

"Drowsy Day" Day Trip

My super wicked uber fantastic flatmate, Kate, hired a car from Abel Rentals for the day. Yay!  The cost was $64 and we found three other people to split the cost of the rental and gas ($50 at about $2.20/liter) with us.

Alex, a fellow New Yorker, did a marvelous job of driving.  I think the "Stay Left" stickers on the windshield and dashboard helped, too.  We all got a chuckle out of him accidentally turning on the windshield wipers when he intended to use the turn signal, but I secretly knew I would have done the same.

We had a lovely drive to the Moeraki Boulders, just around an hour outside of Dunedin.  Maori legend suggests that the boulders are the remnants of a wrecked canoe.

It was low tide when we arrived.

This meant that there were some interesting things to find, besides the boulders.

We didn't have to walk far to get to the boulders.

They are not manmade.  Hard to believe, huh?

Some of them were really weird looking.

Often, people just chose to walk around, shoot a few photos, and call it a day.  Boring!

The night before, as I laid in bed trying to fall asleep, I tried to think of something different to do when we got to the boulders.  This is all I could come up with: 

I envisioned it looking way cooler than that, but I had a helluva time trying to stay in place because my feet kept slipping.

The shadows told us the sun was getting closer to the horizon; and, it was time to go and look for penguins.

We drove to Bushy Beach since it didn't cost anything - we'd have to pay at the other place.

We were mostly interested in the yellow-eyed penguins, but we saw some other local residents.

Hard to see, but the white dots are penguins...

Here's a closer look:

And, another look:

I really enjoyed Bushy Beach because you could see the penguins and enjoy the ocean.

There was a rumor online that the blue penguins sometimes walk across the parking lot of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony.  So, we set off to see for ourselves.

On the way, we saw a ton of birds on a pier.  Some of us less knowledgeable dorks thought they were penguins, Kate set us straight - they were shag...

...enjoying the sunset...

The sign gave us hope, but we didn't see any blue penguins.

So, we took a walk down the pier.

I guess the shag didn't like having more company.

Well, one of them didn't mind us.

On the way back, we stopped at Lockies Takeaways for fish and chips to complete our road trip. Yum!