Kids from Opua School place their penguin boxes under Opua Cruising Club in the hope little blue penguins will call them home. Photo / Peter Trimble
Kids from Opua School place their penguin boxes under Opua Cruising Club in the hope little blue penguins will call them home. Photo / Peter Trimble
Opua School pupils are doing their bit to relieve a local housing crisis by installing apartments on the Bay of Islands foreshore - for little blue penguins or korora.
Brad Windust, of the environmental group Bay Bush Action, donated 15 nesting boxes to the children of Opua School to decorateand place under the Opua Cruising Club.
The site used to be home to many penguins but when the building was replaced several years ago the birds had no safe place to hide from predators such as cats, dogs, ferrets and stoats. The nesting boxes will help make up for that .
Bay Bush Action member Peter Trimble said little blue penguins readily adopted nesting boxes, in some cases occupying them within hours. Breeding success in boxes was equal to or higher than that observed at natural sites. Mr Trimble said little blue penguin numbers had fallen markedly in recent years so safe nesting sites were crucial to keeping them off the endangered list.
Although the boxes, installed on October 3, were late for the current breeding season it was hoped they could attract any stragglers to get a colony started. Adult birds came ashore between May and June to prepare nests and usually laid two eggs from August to November.
The birds could waddle up to 1.5km from the sea and climb 300m to find the perfect nest site. Traditional nests were in burrows, under vegetation, in crevices, between rocks or in caves. Since humans arrived penguins had also taken to nesting under houses and boat sheds, in stormwater pipes and stacks of timber.
Once ready to breed penguins often settled just metres from where they were raised - and once settled in an area, they seldom moved away, Mr Trimble said.
