The Otago Peninsula

We live across the Otago Harbor from Dunedin, on a long finger of land called the Otago Peninsula. We have spent some weekends exploring the peninsula, enjoying the plants and flowers, looking for quirky New Zealand birds and doing a little beach combing.

The beaches around the peninsula are beautiful! Aqua blue water rolls onto long, white crescents that stretch for miles. The sand is very fine, almost powdery in some places, and provides a microdermabrasion service when it's windy! The water is cold and often dangerous so I haven't been swimming in the ocean yet. Some beaches are scattered with pearly mussel, limpet and paua (abalone) shells, ocean-smoothed stones, brittle crab shells, thick & spongy kelp fronds, and sun-bleached driftwood. I even found a lump of coal washed ashore one day, it promptly went into my boyfriend's Christmas stocking!

Through the Spring, and now into Summer, the peninsula is covered in flowers. Many of the blossoms smell amazing and attract the most enormous bumble bees I've ever seen. Sometimes these furry guys are so loaded down with pollen that they can hardly fly straight! The New Zealand Flax is in bloom with long red or yellow flowers filled with sweet nectar. These blossoms attract beautiful green-yellow bellbirds with a clear bell-like song. The incredibly invasive and pervasive Scotch Broom is electric yellow, as is the Yellow Lupine, which smells incredible, like honey and apricots!

We have ventured out to some beaches with Yellow Eyed Penguin colonies, but didn't manage to see any until we stopped looking for them! One afternoon, a solitary penguin washed in on his belly, waddled around the beach a bit, and returned back to the ocean. Later that day, at Victory Beach, we observed a few pairs of Hoiho (the Maori name for Yellow Eyed) body surf in, preen themselves for what seemed like ages, and then slowly made their way across the beach, over the sand dunes, and into the Lupine where they nest. We crouched down by some driftwood so we didn't frighten them and quietly observed these cute, silly birds. We even spotted one spying on us from its lupine hideout along the trail, he was a lot bigger than I imagined. I never dreamed I would see a penguin in the wild.....

We were also fortunate to see the Royal Albatross colony at Taiaroa Head. These birds are HUGE with a 9ft wingspan!! They look like pterodactyls flying among the tiny seagulls and the chicks look like giant cotton balls with eyes and beaks. The center at Taiaroa Head offers great information, pictures, specimens and stores about the colony. Read more about this unique colony-the only mainland nesting site-at the official website
http://www.albatross.org.nz/

In the marshy areas of the peninsula we have see many Pukeko birds mooching (foraging) along the roads. These chicken-size birds are black with bright blue chest feathers and deep red-orange beaks. Their long legs end in long toes used to grasp food. We came across a family with little baby chicks that quickly ran into a clump of grass when we stopped the car. I'm a sucker for cute baby animals.

The peninsula is also populated with Black Swans. I've never seen so many swans! Black Swans were introduced from Australia as game birds but have become so numerous that they sometimes need to be culled. I think they are graceful and beautiful birds, they look like black question marks bobbing in the inlet waters.