Wildlife 2 Dunedin

Royal Albatross

Royal Albatross

Penguin burrow

Penguin nests in snady bank across the road

Sleeping fur seal

NZ sea lions on sandy beach

un squashed dead possum

Grandson Eddie sent me an email with my instructions of what I was to look for. To granny, thanks for your email. New Zealand sounds great and i hear that within one day you will head for the Southern islands. Well i wonder that you may see some marine life;i have done reasearch on animals in New Zealand and i think it would be great if you saw a Fin whale. Its about 20 metres long and 80 tons, making it the 2nd biggest animal on earth,and can be seen around the coast of islands. Another way you can tell it apart is that when it breaches (jumps out of the water), it can lift its whole body into the air like a dolphin. I would also reccomend the New Zealand sealion, which you can see easily if you canoe amongst them in beaches.However there is one animal i would reccomend a lot that is quite easy to see if you know where you can find one, and that animal is: a kea. they are a dark greenish colour, live in the mountains and can make a lot of noise and havoc! If you see any, please take some pictures of them if possible. Wishing you a great time in the South islands. From Eddie. I am afraid I havn' t been on the ocean to see whales or canoed among the sealions but I think Dunedin has put me a bit further up the in the wildlife credibility stakes. I declined to pay to look at a few captive penguins but by walking to the northern heads of the large Dunedin harbour I did see some yellow eyed penguins swimming among the seaweed. They are too nifty to get a photograph though. I did better today on the southern Taiaroa heads of the same harbour which is host to the only mainland colony of Albatross. These majestic birds sailed around the sky like huge gliders. While at the heads I almost tripped over a slumbering fur seal which seem to go into a total coma of sleep and are totally camouflaged in the rocks. Tourists were within about 1 metre and it kept sleeping soundly, infact the only way we even knew it was there was when it snored - probably just snorting actually. At that place little blue penguins have their nests and come ashore quite late every night. However when filming one of their burrows I heard the kitten like mewing which told me that there were babies inside and this was right at the side of the visitors car park. Wildlife and tourists really do have to accommodate each other here. Perhaps not such a good coalition is with possums. So far I havnt seen a live one but have come across a good few flat ones on the road. Today however I found one beside the road which had been killed by a glancing blow only, so at least I got a good look at its curling tail and wonderful bushy coat. Oh yes and I DID see sea lions at Oamaru on my way south and they were sleeping on sandy beaches. I wont see Keas until I get to Mount Cook but will keep looking.

It is interesting that although Connie was a keen sailor and spent a lot of time in New Zealand on the water she never mentions sea life or even native animals at all. From her diary her passions seem to have been food and plants in that order!