On a walk along farewell split (a beach area in Golden Bay on the northern shore of South island) we came across a strange sight:
Coming closer we figured out that this was not a staring contest between penguin and human but a small and injured Blue Eyed penguin and a German tourist unsure what to do about it. Soon there were three Germans looking at the penguin and unsure what to do and one tiny penguin looking back.
We didn’t want to come closer and scare him, but also couldn’t just leave him there. After a while he seemed to make up his mind and started to wobble towards me. His right wing looked broken and he had trouble to keep upright and finally fell over about 10cm away from my foot. That seemed to settle that, I carefully reached out and touched his back. He didn’t flinch so I tried stroking him and he seemed to calm down. After some discussion we checked for mobile reception (Anke had some) and called the DOC Hotline for wildlife emergencies. The penguin meanwhile settled down in front of Astrid’s feet (the other German tourist)
On the phone they patched us through to the local DOC Ranger who gave us the address of a couple that takes care of injured penguins and asked us to bring the little guy to them. No question there, we would do that!
So Anke took her pullover, we gently wrapped the bird in it and off we went
The walk to our car took quite a while so figured the guy (or girl) needed a name. Since a penguins gender is nearly impossible to find out by looks we decided it was a He and that he would be called “Stan”. On the way Stan seemed to get his strength back a bit and started looking around and struggling, but after a couple of attempts of wrapping him more comfortable he started to calm down and dose. At the car we used a small box to keep him for the trip
After the first couple of minutes driving he stopped looking around and started to get sleepy again and when we stopped to ask for directions he fell asleep
We dropped him off with a nice couple who told us they were going to take him to the veterinarian and that he might not make it but had a fare chance. They promised to let us know what happens with our new friend Stan.