Restless Peregrine: February 2011

Slightly Foxed

Oamaru, New Zealand, February 27, 2011.

Dune Surfing!

I have SUCH surfboard envy right now!!
Sandfly Bay, Dunedin, New Zealand, February 27, 2011.

On Disasters Big and Small (or, What We Do Makes a Difference)

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake earlier this week somehow caused the largest recorded ground shaking in New Zealand history. Experts are still trying to work out exactly how the relatively small initial jolt (compared to the 7.1 quake that hit the same city 5 months ago) became what it became - the deadliest natural disaster ever in New Zealand. Their best guess so far is that the first shock waves impacted the basalt hills that ring the city and were reflected back on themselves and magnified - right into the heart of Christchurch. At lunchtime. On a sunny Tuesday. That changed the city forever.

4 days after the quake, 145 people are confirmed dead. Over 200 people remain missing. Over 2000 people have been treated for injuries, including some who remain in critical condition in hospital. 80% of Christchurch has no water. 30% has no power. Large sections of the city have been flooded by burst underground pipes. The damage is unimaginable, and heartbreaking.

But this is not that story.

This story is about a little, lost penguin, very far from home.

As my friend Anne and I pulled up to the car park tonight for our regular Saturday evening volunteer duty on Sandfly Bay, suddenly she turned to me and exclaimed 'Ooh, I have butterflies in my stomach, tonight isn't going to be good.' There were a lot more vehicles in the lot than usual, and most of them were local (often the hardest people to deal with on the beach, because they feel like, being local, they can do whatever they want and don't need to listen to anyone else) rather than the rental campers that we more often see. The weather was calm and sunny, and people were out to enjoy.

We picked up the notebook that volunteers record each night's happenings in at the top of the (loooong, very looooooooooong) hill, and began the steep climb down the sand dunes to the beach as usual. We stopped at the viewing platform a couple of hundred meters below the parking lot to survey the bay, the same as we always do, and immediately noticed a large cluster of people at the base of the trail. Anne pulled out her binoculars, started to scowl, and pointed out the penguin in their midst. And then started down the trail at record speed.

The thing about penguins at Sandfly Bay is, they are very, very, very shy. Of people. Of other animals. Even of other penguins. So the fact that this bird appeared to be sitting right in the middle of a large group of humans was very alarming. More alarming still was how those humans were behaving - swarming all over the little creature, cameras flashing away, giving it no space at all to be. The posted rule on the beach is that people shouldn't get closer than 200 meters to the penguins at any time. And here were 10 or more people only an arm's length away. From a clearly troubled bird.

Anne is in better shape than I am, and has been making the trip down to the beach as a volunteer for the last 3 years. Tonight was my 6th time ever. She made it down faster than I did. The bird was scrawny and quite listless, with large patches of feathers missing thanks to the fall moult. A few of the people were very cooperative and followed her instructions to move back without any complaints. Some took a little more convincing (after having asked him politely several times to back off the bird, to no avail, one man started swearing at her when she finally just stepped in front of his camera). She got the unenviable task of staying there and trying to keep everyone a safe distance away. I got to take the cell phone back up the dune until I could get a signal to call for the Department of Conservation duty officer to come down for a rescue.

It is over a kilometer from the beach to the car park. Straight up. It was another 1.3 km further along the road (up again) until my phone got enough of a signal to call out. The duty officer was very busy, having already had two other emergency calls before mine. Her instructions? Please pick up the penguin, carry it up to the road (ah, the dune again!), and she would meet us there to take it to the hospital.

It took considerably less time to get back down to the beach than it had to get to the point where I made the phone call.

Anne was sitting on a dune, quite a few meters back from the bird, with about 7 people around her. We transferred everything from the soft fabric shoulder bag that she carries on the beach into my backpack, got her polar fleece ready for an ambush, and approached the bird. A Fiordland Crested penguin, approximately the entire breadth of the country away from where he should have been. With me in front of him and Anne behind, he raised his wings half-heartedly but didn't even try to run away. Anne draped the fleece carefully over him, took him firmly in two hands, and together we manoeuvred him into the bag. Keeping well away from his impressive beak (which didn't protest his capture too much in any case). And then we started up the dune. Again.

It is a testament to how tired and weak the bird must have been that he barely tried to move the entire way up to the car. Anne was a superstar, carrying him the long way up the dunes, without stopping once to rest. I, having just made the climb once, was considerably slower. Still, we both got to the car faster than we'd ever managed it before, with no complaints from our little passenger. We nestled him into the safest spot we could think of in the car - on the floor behind the front seat, with the bag straps wrapped around a locked seat belt, and drove up the road to get another cel phone signal to (re)contact the duty officer.

I had never seen a Fiordland Crested Penguin before tonight. It was a strange (and incredible) feeling to have one riding in the car behind me, wrapped in a sweater, seat belted in.

The duty officer, Mel, turned the corner in her DOC truck at just the moment that we got cell coverage to contact her. We all pulled over to the side together, and transferred the bird. I will probably never, ever in my life again get that close to that kind of penguin...holding him in my hands, as Mel removed the coverings and moved him into a plastic pet carrier in the back of her truck. Even with half of his feathers missing, he was still beautiful - twin rows of vivid yellow feathers standing straight up along either side of his sleek, black head, red beak long and sharp, eyes bright. A wild penguin. In my hands.

Next stop for the bird was Mel's house for the night, where he'll get a good meal before going on to the penguin hospital in the morning. He didn't appear to be injured, just very, very small and hungry. During the 2 week moult penguins don't go to sea to feed, but instead stay on land, scratching old feathers out to make room for the new ones, not eating. If they're not heavy enough to get through the two weeks when the process begins they're in a lot of trouble...not waterproof or insulated enough to go out to feed, but not strong enough not to. It's a precarious time for a penguin. For this penguin, nearly his final time.

With the penguin safely on his way to good food and great care, Anne and I decided to head back down to the beach one more time to finish our regular rounds. There were still a lot of people out, and since it was still a couple of hours before dark more birds would probably be heading in. We arrived just in time to sit down with a group of young Brazilians to watch a Yellow-Eyed penguin waddle ashore, and then another, and then another. We watched a couple of giant sea lions showing off their bulk. And a baby fur seal manically chasing a penguin from rock to rock to rock. And we watched the sun set, over one of the most beautiful stretches of land on earth. And then we walked up the enormous dune again.

There was a plea in the newspaper this week for people to bring bagged lunches to a drop center at the university to send up to volunteer rescuers in Christchurch. They asked for non-perishables, like chocolate bars, granola bars, cookies, and cans of tuna (fruit and drinks were donated en-masse by some local companies to add at the scene). Today you can't buy canned tuna in a single store in Dunedin - thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lunches were donated. Walking home from my office (beside the drop point) this afternoon I saw all of the people coming, bags in hand, and the pallets of food already packed up and waiting to be loaded onto the donated trucks to go. Everyone doing their little part to make a difference in this disaster.

Walking up the dune for the 3rd time tonight, I felt the same sense of awe I felt when looking at all those lunches. What we do does make a difference.

Out of Existence

A cray fish that I caught and cooked,
cooling on a cutting board in the kitchen of
a Christchurch 'backpackers' (guesthouse)
that no longer exists, thanks to the
earthquake. Christchurch, New Zealand,
August 2009.

Christchurch, Before

Just before 1pm yesterday, a massive earthquake tore
through Christchurch, New Zealand, levelling large sections
of the downtown business district when it was packed with
workers and shoppers. The death toll is already at 75, with
more expected as rescue teams get into more of the collapsed
buildings around the city. This photo was taken from the
hills above Sumner last August (2010), just a week before the last
major earthquake struck the city. Because that quake struck
in the middle of the night, no one was killed. And although
damage was extensive, it was nowhere near on the scale of
this quake, many of the historic buildings having been already
weakened. House sized boulders came off the cliffs just out of
view in this shot, crushing buildings beneath them.

The spire of Christchurch's famous cathedral,
symbol of the city. It survived the first quake
last September, but came down yesterday -
onto the pavement of Cathedral Square, and
also through the roof of the main sanctuary.
A popular tourist activity was climbing the spire,
from which there were terrific views of the city.

This is inside the spire, looking up towards the roof.

From inside the spire, looking down onto the (now absent)
roof of the main sanctuary below.
Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2009.

A Walk in the Park

Dunedin Botanical Gardens, Dunedin, New Zealand,
February 20, 2011.

"In your body is the garden of flowers..."

"...Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and
there gaze on the infinite beauty.” Kabir
Chinese Gardens, Dunedin, New Zealand, February 2011.

Festive Taiwan

During the Lantern Festival,
Beitou, Taipei, Taiwan, February 2010.

Pathways, Now and Then

The seashore around Goseong, South Korea,
is FULL of fossilized dinosaur footprints. To
stop some of the damage of people walking
all over them, new wooden footpaths have
been built all along the coast.

Just two of hundreds of prints along this stretch of shore.

Basically all of the places where you can see water
reflecting light on the stone are footprints. When the tide
goes out, the prints become little foot-shaped pools. How
incredible to think of something we make every single day
lasting for so long. I wonder what Goseong looked like to
all those dinosaurs?
Goseong, South Korea, November 2010.