The Wandering Tattler

These are yellow-eyed penguins (see narrative from earlier post below). The blue penguins cannot be photographed in Oamaru, as they return to shore after dark and, as an endangered species, can be viewed only under tightly controlled conditions. Click on each thumbnail for a larger image.

Oamaru is a small city on the east coast of the South Island, between Christchurch and Dunedin. It's famous for breeding colonies of two different species of small penguin, the Yellow-eyed Penguin and Blue Penguin (same species we'd seen near Adelaide and in Sydney Harbor in Australia). The Yellow-eyed penguins return to shore before nightfall and climb steep cliffs to the their burrows. This seems like a remarkable achievement for a creature that seems primarily adapted to swimming in the ocean.

On April 4, we took the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch westward across the Canterbury Plain and along a river valley up to Arthur's Pass in the Southern Alps. the TranzAlpine is the only rail line linking the east and west coasts of the South Island and it follows one of only a handful of auto roads that traverse the mountains. The village of Arthur's Pass, nestled in a valley at 3,000 feet among steep 7,000-foot peaks, is the headquarters of a national park that has several terrific hiking trails. We spent several hours hiking through the dripping rain forest to the base of a couple of thundering, high-volume waterfalls. Along one of the forest trails I spied this New Zealand Robin, which approached me fearlessly, ultimately flying up to perch on my telephoto lens. I actually had to shoo it away in order to gain enough distance to use my camera. When we reached the highway and began to walk back to the village, a rainbow appeared over our destination. A nice conclusion to a day of dramatic scenery and strenuous hiking.