Eye to Eye with The Yellow Eye

Adventuring has been a bit thin lately, probably because we are settling in here, and definitely because of winter. But I've been thinking lately, already in fond-memory mode, of an excursion Estin and I took within our first week of arrival last December. The Otago Peninsula is home to seals, albatross, and penguins. We set off on a bike ride out onto the peninsula toward Sandfly Bay, home of the hoiho (Maori; noisy shouter), the Yellow-Eyed Penguin. This is the rarest and most ancient of all penguins. It leaves it's young nesting amongst the tall grass while fishing during the day. Evenings, the adults return and that's a good time to see them emerge from the surf. To get there, Estin and I linked up his Trail-a-Bike to the mountain bike and tackled some serious hills. At the carpark, we dropped the bikes and walked 30 min down the trail and onto the dunes. Bunch of birds on the beach, seaweed, nice coastline, etc. The far side of the bach has a viewing hide from which one can observe the birds. We plop onto the sand for a rest and a snack before making the trek overto teh hide. A few minutes of basking later, Estin says "hey Pop there's penguins on the beach". "Naw, Estin, those are seagulls" (over-excitable child). "No really!" I take a closer look and sure enough, coupla hundreds away, amongst the gulls, there stand a pair of penguins. A delightful moment for a landlubber for whom pengiuns previously existed only in zoos and on TV. There we were, on a warm sunny day, watching penguins waddle up the beach (it should be 50 degrees below zero to see this shouldn't it?). But wait it gets better. We think, hey we'll just head down to that patch of tallgrass and watch them from about 50 yards away. So we hunker down out of view and scramble over to the dune with the grass (newbies don't know that the adults are making their way up into the nesting area to feed the chicks). We carefully and quietly poke our heads up, and damned if we don't come face to face with a penguin, about 5 feet away. S/He doesn't get frigthened, we stay still in awe, the animal is gorgeous. The hoiho and it's partner stop, dry their wings in the air a bit, and continue on their way. While I'm no expert, and am now aware that one should keep considerable distance to avoid disturbing feeding time for the chicks, these animals showed no sign of distress. They moved deliberately and when stopping to dry their wings, were majestic. They were surprisingly agile when climbing the dunes. I was transfixed, and I know the moment was special to Estin because he kept very quiet and still, which has not recurred in the eight months since this event. Because we now know that the hoiho is endangered and needs more space, coming eye to eye with the Yellow Eye is fixed into place as a memorable event that won't happen again.

photo: tourism New Zealand