This wee chap, seen from a long distance away, is one of the rarest penguins on earth. It’s a Yellow-eyed Penguin. Estimates of the wild population are around 1000-1500 birds left, of which 800 or so nest on the South Island of New Zealand (the remainder are on Stewart Is and two sub-antarctic islands in NZ’d territory).

#NewZealandWildlife #YellowEyedPenguin #bird

@david hard to get good pictures of them; I should look at the ones I recently took.

The number of hoiho at Nugget Point is unfortunately way down from 20 years ago.

@david After being briefed on keeping well clear of Dunedin’s littoral animals, what did a Hoiho do? Came over to inspect me!
@david Same evening, we saw *the* young Hooker’s sea lion female in South Island waters. The other two females were Up North (yes, only 3 female HSLs around in 2006).