Resources and starting activities

The starting activities act as a baseline survey of student understanding. The arguments are revisited at the end of the project.

Board game

Download page 1 and page 2 of the World of Hoiho board game. (Make sure you set the printer at 'landscape').

Penguins at a zoo, on a guided tour or at the beach?

Discuss the pros and cons of keeping a captive population of yellow-eyed penguins.

Discuss the pros and cons of seeing penguins on a guided tour to a reserve such as Penguin Place. This is part of a sheep farm on the Otago Peninsula where the penguins can be seen at close range from observation hides and covered trenches.

Then, discuss the pros and cons of unregulated visitor access to yellow-eyed penguin colonies such as Sandfly Bay near Dunedin.

Yellow-eyed penguin habitats

Click on this image to download an A4-sized picture of a yellow-eyed penguin habitat.

Mark the threats to the penguins with a cross.

Tick the all the habitat improvements you can see.

List all the additional habitat improvements needed to make it a yellow-eyed penguin-friendly habitat.

Find out what the Katiki Point Penguin Charitable Trust are doing to improve their habitat. Jill Leichter who is completing a masters thesis in Science Communication has written a fascinating blog about how penguins end up at the Katiki Point Reserve hospital - and how they are nursed back to health.

Long Point is a reserve in the Catlins where 47 nests were found this past season, representing 8% of the estimated minimum number of breeding pairs on the Otago coast. TVNZ clip about Long Point.

Te Rere Scientific Reserve is in the Catlins, near the bottom of the South Island. The reserve is 70 hectares in size and the land goes down to the sea where the hoiho come ashore.  There is a sheltered inlet and a sloping rock shelf which provide landing areas for the penguins.

None of these reserves are ‘enclosures'. Considering how far these amazing birds travel each day any sort of enclosure would be more like ‘home detention’ and simply wouldn’t work.

The cones

Yellow-eyed penguins moult every year in April/May in a good year, but moult can be varied or delayed and some have been known to moult between January to May. Juveniles moult earlier - February through to April. They moult all their feathers all at once. During the moult, plumage is not waterproof, nor is the body well insulated, so the hoiho is unable to go to sea to feed.

They lose approx 40% of body weight during the moult. Penguins moulting or just finished moulting are also very tired because they have not eaten in so long, and they have trouble moving away from predators.

Discuss the pros and cons of placing traffic cones around moulting penguins.  Look at this issue from Other People's Views.

Weta Workshop's yellow-eyed penguin double

Read how Weta Workshops created a very life-like yellow-eyed penguin double for a German TV programme.

Discuss why a real yellow-eyed penguin could not be featured in the film.

Other penguins?

Yellow-eyed penguins are not the only penguins found in New Zealand. What are the others? Research all 16 species of penguins and create a graph of their comparative sizes for this website. Email us the graph and any other information you have found about all the other penguins.

Swim or fly?

A bird, such as the yellow-eyed penguin, that dives, requires a completely different build from a bird that flies. It is thought that for birds that reach one kilogram in weight, the change from wings to flippers is made.

Chart the differences between sea birds that fly and sea birds that dive.

The hoiho noise shouting competition

The hoiho (its Maori name) the noise shouter, has been named for a very good reason. It makes a very loud sound telling it's chicks that it is returning to the nest with food. Why not have a noise shouter competition within the class or school at assembly? Score by the loudest and the most accurate call.

General yellow-eyed penguin information.

Jigsaw puzzle

Try this online puzzle.

Yellow-eyed penguin Internet sites

The Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust

The Department of Conservation

Penguin Net - Penguin threats - Excellent Q&A pages

Otago Museum

Yellow-eyed Penguin books

The Hoiho New Zealand's Yellow-Eyed Penguin by Adele Vernon and Dean Schneider