Cold comfort: Snow place like home

DIY home-building fever has struck the gentoo penguins at Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium on the Auckland waterfront.

They are industriously building their nests in the snow-filled Antarctic penguin colony enclosure in preparation for egg-laying.

This involves carefully selecting perfect pebbles to make sure their nests out-do their neighbour's.

One of the gentoos has taken the nesting season so seriously that it commandeers the keeper's brush so that it can sweep the nesting area clean.

The birds in Kelly Tarlton's programme weigh 5kg to 7kg and are healthy specimens of a genus listed as "near threatened" on the Word Conservation Union Red List.