Hello and welcome to our winter newsletter.
The penguin season is getting underway, penguins are pairing up and Ranger Linden Brown is seeing blue penguins or kororā pairing up in their burrows in our monitored colony near Charleston - see story below. Breeding success monitoring will begin next month in South Westland for the Fiordland crested penguin or tawaki.
We are moving things up a notch for our blue penguin research through the imminent installation of a fixed and automated microchip reader. Linden and former Ranger Matt Charteris have ensured that penguins will have to pass through a narrow gap to their nests, where the reader will be installed. This, and using mobile wand readers in other areas, will revolutionise what we know about the population dynamics - more on all of that in the next newsletter!
You may have seen our promotion of Stone Arrow in previous newsletters.
Stone Arrow create beautiful sustainable art and jewellery in Takaka and you can find it online. Rather than a discount code, they use donation codes! If you pop 'bluepenguin' in the discount code box, a very generous 20% of your purchase price will come to the Trust, so you have something special, this excellent little company has a sale and the Trust is supported to do penguin conservation.
They have a wide range of gorgeous jewellery - I especially love my earrings made from old Bombay Sapphire gin bottle glass! - and now they also have metalbird penguin garden sculptures - photo above. How gorgeous are those!
Another small sustainable NZ business that supports us is Tumbleweed Tees. Their wonderful artwork is used on tee shirts and other products and they support relevant conservation projects through sales of adult tee shirts. We recently received a donation of $100 from Tumbleweed Tees - 20 adult tawaki tee shirts sold in recent months - a huge thank you to them and you if you bought one!
Hokitika Glass Studio also support the West Coast Penguin Trust with a donation box in the studio and the very generous donation of a beautiful glass penguin now and then - see below for photos and the lucky winner of our annual Supporter draw!
Please support businesses who support us where you can.
As usual, we're including the DOC hotline so that it's handy in case you come across an injured penguin or any wildlife that seems to be struggling, 0800 DOCHOT (362 468), and do all you can to ensure they are safe from dogs.
Also, if you see or hear about a dead penguin, please let us know using our simple reporting form, ideally with a photograph, and, if you can have a look and it's obvious or apparent, your thoughts on possible cause of death. We can then add the information to our database - which informs our conservation actions.
Thank you again for your continued interest and support, and please feel free to forward this newsletter or any stories - who doesn't love talking about penguins?!
Inger
Manager, West Coast Penguin Trust