Otago Peninsular, the Royal Albatross Centre

Otago peninsular is famous for several reasons - at the very end of the peninsular is Taiaroa Head, named after a 19th century Maori chief; there was a Maori settlement here from the 1600s as it could be very easily defended and has abundant fishing opportunities. The other reasons are because of the unique ecology and species of penguins and albatross to be found nesting here. It is the only bit of mainland in the world where tourists can see albatross in their natural habitat. The only other readily accessible island where albatross nests are to be found is the Galapagos islands, and not many tourists go there.

So we had to see what the fuss was about - why does David Attenborough call this place special and unique, a must see for tourists who like nature programmes. We decided to set aside a day in Dunedin for our ecology and rare species watching.

The day started with a trip to the piece of land on the opposite side of the peninsular, just past Fort Chalmers. There is a nice little sculpture park at the top of the hill.



It takes around 45 minutes to drive from Dunedin to Fort Chalmers and then on to Orokonui ecosanctuary, where they take pest eradication very seriously indeed. This is the Maori god who guards the site for them!

Around 9km of specialised fencing prevents mice, rats and other animals from burrowing under, and a curved top prevents cats and possums from climbing over. Goats in the area were also eradicated. There are no introduced mammals or other species, so that bird species can thrive in their natural ecosystem, and there are plans to re-introduce kiwis here, to join rare species that have arrived naturally to take advantage of there being no predators or pests.

We saw fern birds, kaka, and tui, among other rare species here on a delightful forest walk.
The walks take around 1-2 hours and there are bird feeding stations where these rare birds cluster.
The forested areas are quite gloomy with thick ferns and native trees.

The evening trip to the Royal Albatross Centre was a chance to see another rare bird. The Northern Royal Albatross is found here - around 60 pairs, and I think about 12 chicks hatched this year. The only other place to see the Northern albatross is on the very remote Chatham islands, where there are several thousand seabirds, but not a lot of tourists!

Our guide gave us a very moving account of the lifecycle and behaviour of these sea birds, which live most of their lives circling the southern ocean on howling sea winds, and come to land only to find a mate, and to hatch an egg, and feed the young chick. The whole process is so precarious and I found the rituals of surviving at sea, mating, and rearing a young chick profoundly moving and inspiring.

The mature northern albatross is around 6-8kg in weight with a wingspan of about 3m. You can see how large these birds are by comparing Carol in front of the wingspan, shown here.

Here is in half a stuffed albatross in the visitor's centre.

These seabirds come back to the very spot where they were born after around six or seven years of flying at sea, to display their flying skills in the wind, and find a mate. The ones we saw flying around were therefore adolescents showing off. The nesting birds would be either male or female - they take turns incubating the egg (80 days), after mating every second year, with the other parent out at sea fishing for squid for several days at a time. Eventually the parent seabird returns with up to 2kg of fish in its stomach, for itself and for the baby chick, which is fed until it fledges after about 240 days.

The chick takes time to put on weight and then has to waddle around and test its wings for some time before being able to fly. The parents restrict its food in the last couple of weeks to slim it down in preparation for its first flight, and once it can fly, it must go out to sea and fish for itself. After rearing a young bird, the parents, who have themselves lost weight in the process, take a year's holiday apart before returning to the same spot to mate and do it all again.

After our evening spent watching the adolescent albatross flying about and the adults keeping their young chicks warm and safe, we ate supper at the café restaurant and waited for sunset and the blue penguin tour. The penguins only come ashore after dark, having spent the whole day from before sunrise, fishing for their own needs and to regurgitate fish for their chicks, waiting in their nests.

The blue penguins nest up the grassy slopes off pilot's beach, and there is a viewing platform built up off the ground and the area around it is lit by lighting that allows you to see the water's edge where rafts of penguins swim ashore together and climb up the banks of the shore like busy commuters in rush hour from the London underground. The guides counted around 90 penguins by the time we left to drive the 45 minutes back home, at around 10.30pm. They are about 20cm tall, and although they waddle, they climb the bank and their path uphill pretty efficiently. They do stop to dry off before entering their nests, and there is much duck like quacking and a kind of brrrrlll sound they make to communicate with each other.

This is my only usable photograph, since I am unable to find the settings to allow a full manual control over the camera, and flash is not permitted. I had to have a penguin stand still for 30 seconds and keep the camera held against the viewing platform for the 30 seconds the iris aperture was open.