There are penguins in Wellington! Penguins! Wellington! I find this abnormally exciting. If you’ve met me in the past month or so, I’ve probably told you about them already. Apparently they live all over the south coast and around the harbour, with the majority on lovely predator-free Matiu/Somes Island. And on Saturday I was very happy to get involved with the local Forest and Bird’s Places for Penguins project. A couple of hours of weeding fun in the sun at Tarakena Bay was a couple of kilometres and a million miles from big smoke Wellington, and it was a nice morning chatting, enjoying the place, and restoring some habitat as well. Many of the local little blue penguins are endangered by traffic or predators, and the project is about restoring habitat for them to nest in without having to cross the road, and providing nesting boxes where dogs can’t catch them. I think there’s another weeding day in May, then planting in June, and monitoring work starting soon so it’s easy to get involved if anyone’s around here and keen – there is a link off the bottom of that page to email the co-ordinator. I found it fun to do some real practical work too after the week in the office too. Good to get away from the inner city pressure.
Thanks to couchsurfer Cris for the photos.
Posted by Andrew Roxburgh 
