Penguins coming home

From Ashburton we headed to Oamuru, further South, by way of a delicious lunch at Firestone Kitchen, courtesy of another Lonely Planet recommendation. We’d come especially to watch the penguins so at 6.45pm we donned the warmest clothing we had (not warm enough) and boarded Denis’s bus. He took us on a tour of the old town, which with many limestone Edwardian buildings was pretty impressive and then across to the hide above the beach where the Yellow Eyed Penguins come ashore at night. These are very rare and there aren’t many of them, though from the distance on the cliff top I couldn’t tell if they what colour they were anyway, even with the loan of a kindly English chap’s binoculars. We did see the chicks in their nest on the cliff, where they were waiting for mum or dad to come home with their supper. The chicks were lovely, all fluffy white feathers and big eyes, nearly as big as the adults. After a lot of waiting we saw about 3 heading in, falling over in the waves on the beach, just like I would and waddling slowly up the beach ready to climb up to the waiting chicks. The English chap and his wife had been in central Christchurch when the earthquake struck but luckily they were in the park so they waited there whilst the after shocks died down before heading back to find their car not realising till afterwards quite how bad it had been.
We then moved round the corner to watch the blue penguins coming home for the night – they come in a bit later, which is very considerate of them and allows you to see both kinds! However the blue penguins, who are not endangered and live in Oamuru in much greater numbers (up to 3000 in the height of the breeding season), have been slightly more commercially exploited though in a very sensitive way. They have had a nesting area created for them in an old quarry and a fenced off grandstand has been built where we all sat quietly, no cameras allowed, to watch them coming in. They come ashore in groups, known as ‘rafts’ and then make their way up the slope, across the gravel and into the nesting area where they stand around in groups chatting to each other before retiring. They also spend a long time on the way in wandering around aimlessly or standing looking as if they’ve forgotten what they’re doing or where they’re going, which at ten o’clock at night in the freezing cold did make me want to rush over and tell them to hurry up! 2 chaps on the bus overheard:
Man 1: Don’t you think they’re more intelligent than some birds, what with all that mating for life and making special nests?
Man 2: I don’t know, I thought they looked pretty stupid – all that standing around not looking like they knew what they were doing!
Anyway they were very sweet and it was good to see them so close up though I was very glad to get back to the van where we capitulated and put the heater on for a bit!