Jewel in the Crown: New Zealand’s Yellow-Eyed Penguin
Voted Bird of the Year 2019, this rare penguin lives on the brink
Huddled behind the hide at the far end of Sandfly Bay, we shelter from winds whipping sand across the dunes. The sun is yet to break as we wait for yellow-eyed penguins to make their way from the headland to the rocks below. It’s such a perilous journey from forest nests to ocean feeding grounds, that I wonder why a penguin makes this long trek across farmland each day. But it hasn’t always been this way.
Millions of years ago, these solitary penguins enjoyed the cool sanctuary of a forest canopy that stretched the length of the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. To survive in icy seas, yellow-eyed penguins are insulated by fat but on land, they need protection from the summer heat. Ancient hardwood forests once provided weatherproof nest sites and protected chicks against seabird attacks. With no predators stealing their eggs and chicks, these native penguins flourished in a forested paradise.
I held a tiny hope we might be watching penguins alone. Maybe the half-hearted would be put off by the early start. Then there’s the hike across farmland and down steep dunes to a game of British bulldog on the beach as we dodged Hooker’s sea lions, magnificent but wild. It’s mid-summer, but the…
