{"id":623,"date":"2008-09-05T02:17:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T02:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/?p=623"},"modified":"2025-07-12T21:58:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:58:46","slug":"penguins-on-a-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.hellyer.kiwi\/ryanhellyer\/2008\/penguins-on-a-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins on a mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my trend of writing blog posts totally out of sync, here are some photos from a recent trip to the Otago Peninsula. I acted as tour guide for visiting student Meghan Dunn during her visit here. My previous attempts to find penguins for tourists has always failed. I usually the find the pesky little birds when I least expect it, but never when I&#8217;m trying to! So to avoid that frustration we headed to Penguin Place, a little sanctuary about 30 mins drive from my place.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-633\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_closeup-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Penguin Place is on a small piece of land on the coast. If you zoom in, you can see the constructions in the sand hills designed for tourists to watch the birds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/penguin-place-panorama.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-627\" style=\"text-decoration: underline\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/penguin-place-panorama-440x99.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"99\" \/><\/a>The birds aren&#8217;t caged, they&#8217;re allowed to come and go as they please, but are provided with warm, man made shelters which they seem to quite like living in. Before heading down to the main Yellow Eyed penguin area, we stopped to see some Baby Blue penguins which also lived there, you can see one sitting in it&#8217;s little hut in the photo below.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/baby-blue-penguin-in-box.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-624\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/baby-blue-penguin-in-box-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">We watched the birds surfing in on the waves after a hard days work catching fish. This little dude took his time and sat out in the waves enjoying the scenery for a while.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_outofwater.jpg\"><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_inwater.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-635\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_inwater-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">But he eventually waddled his way out of the surf &#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-636\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_outofwater-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><br \/>\nand then met up with his little buddy who waddled back over the sandhill with him &#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweyes_offthebeach.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-642\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweyes_offthebeach-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-641\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweyes_makinway-440x330.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"330\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">but his friend treated it as a race &#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweyes_makinway.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_race.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-637\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_race-440x228.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"228\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">So he decided to lean back and have a stretch instead. All that fishing must have taken it&#8217;s toll!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yellow_icanfly.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-630\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yellow_icanfly-439x586.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"439\" height=\"586\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_stare.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_wander.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-640\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_wander-440x586.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"586\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">He even posed for me \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-638\" src=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/files\/2008\/09\/yelloweye_stare-440x586.avif\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"586\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my trend of writing blog posts totally out of sync, here are some photos from a recent trip to the Otago Peninsula. I acted as tour guide for visiting student Meghan Dunn during her visit here. My previous attempts to find penguins for tourists has always failed. I usually the find the pesky little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,3,367,380],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animal","tag-animals","tag-otago-peninsula","tag-penguins","last-post"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Penguins on a mission - Ryan Hellyer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ryan.hellyer.kiwi\/2008\/penguins-on-a-mission\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Penguins on a mission - Ryan Hellyer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continuing my trend of writing blog posts totally out of sync, here are some photos from a recent trip to the Otago Peninsula. I acted as tour guide for visiting student Meghan Dunn during her visit here. My previous attempts to find penguins for tourists has always failed. 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