Dunedin

3-6.02

Woke up and finally feel better :)

Today, direction Dunedin!! Feels like I’m going home ;)

It is a nice city, doesn’t look anything like the florida one but I like it.

Wandering around and making some booking at the i-site, much easier to go ask for info than looking up everything yourself.

I went for a run, but couldn’t find the RFB crew, where are you guys??

Baldwin Street, steepest street in the world

So for the next day, visit of the Cadbury chocolate in the morning and the Speight Brewery late afternoon :)

The visit at the factory was nice, you leave with a bunch of chocolate, but I wish you could see more of the production line. Most of what they show you is on DVD :(.

Not sure what those are doing in there...

It has nothing to do with the factory, but I had to post it...

And from there, I stooped at the i-site again to see what were my option to go see some wildlife in the Otago Peninsula without a car. I wanted to go to the Albatross centre but with no car no way to get there :(. There was a tour I could go on but the only availability was for the afternoon, so  I moved the brewery for the next day and let’s go see some penguin. 

For once, I’m glad I don’t have a car. It was the best tour I’ve ever been on and we’ve been really lucky with everything we’ve been able to see. The two guy that were guiding us gave us soo much information, loved it!!

Need to go to the i-site more often…

So, if you are interested, here are everything I learn (or I should say what I can remember…) about the wildlife we saw. If you don’t care, juste take a look at the pictures ;)

Royal Albatross

They live average 30 years old. They mate for life, but if one of them die, they’ll look for a new partner.

They weight around 8kg, most of it is from the feather and fat, light bone structure.

They flight low above the water, kind of gliding. They can can fly up to five days without stopping, which make the researcher think they sleep while flying.

They can fly up to 700km a day for food.

It take one year from the time they lay an egg until the baby leave the nest. At this point, they fly out and leave at sea. They will spend 4-5 years living that way before coming back and start looking for a mate. It might take them a while to find somebody and by the time they have there first baby, they’re around 10 years old. 

They never have an other chick after one leave the nest, they wait at least one year. Average is 1 every 3 years.

They can feed a baby on their own, if one of the parents died, the chick is most likely to die.

Ils vivent environ 30 ans. Ils restent aves leurs partenaires pour la vie à moins que l0un deux décède.

Ils pèsent environ 8kg, la majorité du poids venant des plumes et muscles, leur structure osseuse étant très légère.

Ils volent à basse altitude, juste au dessus de l’eau. Ils peuvent voler non-stop jusqu’à 5 jours, ce qui fait penser au scientifiques qu'ils dorment en volant.

Ils peuvent parcourir jusqu’à 700km par jour.

Ca prend environ une année depuis le moment l’oeuf est pondu jusqu’à ce que le petit quitte le nid. Quand il s’en va, il part vivre dan l’océan et va revenir à l’age de 4-5 ans pour chercher un partenaire. Ils ont en générale leur premier bébé à environ 10 ans.

Après que le petit est parti, ils prennent une année avant d’en avoir un autre. Ils ont en moyenne un bébé tout les trois ans.

Si un des parents meure, le petit ne va pas survivre, ayant besoin de deux adultes pour le nourrir.

Fur Seal and Sealion

First there is not much difference between them. If you look at them they both have little hear, closely related.

The seal have a pointy nose while the sealion is more rounded.

The seal move on the beach hoping, can only move his “feet” together. The sealion can move his “feet” separately, so is his kind of walking around.

Il y a pas beaucoup de différence entre un phoque et une otarie. Ils possèdent tout les deux des petites oreilles.

Les phoques ont un nez plus rond que les otaries.

Les phoques ne peuvent pas bouger leurs “pieds” séparément, donc ils font des petits saut pour se déplacer sur la plage, alors que les otarie elles peuvent marcher un “pied” après l’autre.

Sealion

In New Zealand, the sealion had been hunting by the Maori to the point there were no more of them left. Over the last 30 years, they slowly started to come back. At first only a bunch of guys. And in 1990, a female came. She spend some years hiding for the male before giving up and giving birth of a little girl. And now the population is slowly growing,

Actually, there is only 13 females for around 160 males…

They are not afraid of anything. We’ve been lucky to have one of the male come to the beach and it was just going around, not care about us being there. It is a little scary when being standing so close from it, but it make you understand why the Maori hunt them soo much, easy to get.

En Nouvelle Zélande, les otaries ont été chassées jusqu’à extinction par les Maori. Durant les 30 dernières année, ils ont recommencé de revenir en Nouvelle Zélande. Au début juste une bande de male, puis en 1990, une femelle. Elle a passé quelques années à se cacher des males, pour finir par donner naissance à un petite fille et depuis là, la population a commencé à augmenter.

A l’heure actuelle, il y a seulement 13 femelles pour environ 160 males.

Ils ont peur de rien. On a eu la chance d’avoir un male qui et venu nous dire bonjour sur la plage. Il se promène comme si personne est autour, et si t’es sur son chemin, vaut mieux bouger parce qu’il va pas faire un détour…

C’est pas très rassurant de l’avoir aussi près, mais en même temps c’est pas tout les jours que ça arrive. Et on comprend mieux pourquoi les Maoris les chassait temps, proies facile.

To give you an idea how close we were from him

Furseal
The Fur Seal had too been extinct, but this time it was because of the European hunting them for fur.

They have two layer of it, the first one more like dog fur, and the one underneath, really soft. That the one they’ve being hunting for.

Same as sealion, they’re back in NZ and the colonies are getting bigger. 

It’s birth season, so lot’s of little one playing around, so cute and fun to watch :)

Le phoques aussi ont été chassés jusqu’à extinction, mais cette fois la faute est au européens, et c’était pour leur fourrure.

Ils ont deux couches de fourrure. Le première peut être comparée à celle d’un chien. La deuxième, en dessous, et celle qui est recherché, super douce et soyeuse.

Comme les otarie, ils sont de retour en Nouvelle Zélande et les colonies s’agrandissent.

On est en pleine saison des naissance, plein de petit qui joue aux alentour :)

Blue Penguin

They are the smallest penguin in the world. They live in nest burrow. They can be very noisy at night. If your lucky you can see them resting in their nest during the day, or going back from fishing at dusk. 

They live in colonies.

C’est le plus petit manchot au monde. Ils vivent dans des terriers. Ils peuvent être très bruyant la nuit. Avec un peu de chance, on peu les voir dans leur terrier pendant la journée, mais le meilleur moment est à la tombé de la nuit, quand ils revienne de la pêche.

Ils vivent en colonie.

Hiding in his burrow

Yellow eyed penguin

They are only found in New Zealand and are the rarest of the world’s 18 species of penguins. 

They are antisocial animal. As soon as they found there mate, they don’t want to have to do anything with other penguin. They like to live hidden from their neighbours, in coastal vegetation and forest.

They usually mate for life, but if they realized that for some reason they can’t have babies together, they will divorce and try to find someone else. 

They spend their day fishing and come back to shore at dusk, best time to see them.

When the chick is really young, one parents will go for food while the other watch after the nest. They sometimes exchange places during the day. When it get older, both parents go out, requiring both of them to get enough food.

It is, at the same time , the saison for them to get fat, make some reserve for the moulting. This is when the will change their feathers, all of them at once, which takes around 4 weeks and during that time they will just stand and wait until it’s done. If they don’t gain enough weight before it, they will die of starvation.

You can see some seagull waiting close by the nest at dusk, posted there to try to steal the food the adult is going to regurgitate for the baby.

We’ve been lucky to witness a courtship between two of them, and it seem to be going well ;)

On les trouvent seulement en Nouvelle Zélande et parmi les 18 espèces de manchots, ce sont les plus rares.

Ils sont anti-social. Au moment où ils trouvent un conjoint, ils ne veulent plus rien savoir des autres. Ils vivent caché dans la végétation est forêt le long de la côte. 

En générale, ils se marie pour la vie, mais s’ils ne peuvent pas avoir de progéniture ensemble, ils vont divorcé et assure de trouver quelqu’un d’autre.

Ils passent leur journées à pêcher et reviennent sur la rive à la tombée du jour, meilleur moment pour les voir.

Quand le poussin est vraiment jeune, un des parents va allé chercher la nourriture pendant que l’autre surveille le nid. Parfois ils échange leur rôle au milieux de la journée. Quand le poussin devient plus âgé, les deux parents vont partir à la pêche, ayant besoin des deux pour fournir assez de nourriture. 

A la même période, ils doivent se préparer à la mue. Ils vont prendre le plus de poids possible, et au moment où le jeune est partit du nid, ils vont trouver en endroit tranquille et rester là sans bouger jusqu’à ce que toutes leur plumes soit remplacées par des nouvelles. Cela prend environ 4 semaines, et s’ils n’ont pas assez de réservent, ils meurent de faim.

Quand les poussins sont encore dans les nid, on peut voir des mouettes au alentour quand les parents rentrent le soir. Leur but est d’essayer de voler la nourriture qu’ils régurgite.

Et on a eu la chance de voir deux jeunes se faisant la court ;)

Taking a nap on the trail

Coming home after a long day fishing

Baby waiting for its parents to come home

They look happy together :)

There is a lot more to say about all of them, but it’s hard for me to remember everything :(…

Hope you learn a little something.

So yea, best wild life tour ever, went back to the hostel late in the evening and freezing (the temperature dropped to 40…) but really happy, it’s been an amazing day :)

It bring us to the 5th, Wednesday. You have no idea how hard it is to know what’s the date or even day sometimes. Not having to work during the week and off for the weekend routine make it hard to keep track of it…

Not feeling like doing too much, so  I went for a run. Love running in Dunedin ;)

Spend some time at the library. Not to read, but to get free wifi, rare thing in New Zealand!!

And finally went for the Dunedin Brewery tour. Well it’s the Speight’s brewery.

They are built on top of a spring, the best water in the whole city, they say… Next to the front door, there is a faucet from which you can get some of that water for free.

The tour was interesting, but it was hard to understand what our guide was explaining. And at the end, degustation!!

Free spring water

And this mark the end my visit in Dunedin. Back to traveling :)