Yellow Eyed Penguins

---

Otago Peninsula is the site of the endangered yellow eyed penguins. The drive out of Dunedin is fantastic with this amazing scenery hitting you as you turn each corner, of which there are many as we are in New Zealand! Yellow Eyed Penguins are the closest living survivor to pre-historic penguins who used to walk the earth circa. 5'8" tall.

A camouflaged leads down to the various nests of the penguins we visited. Penguins mate for life but there have been cases of divorce, reconcilations, and even gay couples! One of the lady penguins left her mate for Robbie, however Robbie passed away quite soon after so she came back to her orginial choice . Due to the high number of males versus females there is a lot of competition for a girlfriend , however as some parents are unfit to mind their eggs , a male couple were trained up to sit on two abandoned eggs and bring the chicks up. Very progressive these penguins are!

Due to the viewing booths being only about a foot high the penguins feel you are smaller than them so you can literally look into their nests, as this is the breeding season they are all sitting on their eggs waiting for them to hatch.

As we walked along the beach to see the smaller penguins also held at the reserve we saw two seals who have hopped up from the sea to relax along the beach, they were rolling around or playing dead....such an amazing site, we were as close as three metres from them.

---