Boxing day was...you guessed it, wet and rainy. First stop was a whistlestop tour of the Otago Museum (which is different to the Otago Settlers Museum), which contains scale models of many of the ships which were an important part of the development of the city of Dunedin, as well as the skeleton of a not-quite-full-grown fin whale.
Then we drove out to the Otago Peninsular once again, this time to visit the Royal Albatross Centre. We'd booked a tour at 12:00, which consisted of a bit of talk from the guide to begin with, answering such important questions as "are the albatrosses royal, or is the centre royal?" to which the answer is "the albatrosses, duh!" The centre is there because Southern Royal Albatrosses (see?) have their only mainland nesting colony there. We then watched a short film about albatrosses and other animals before trooping up to the viewing centre. The area where the albatrosses nest is fenced off from the public, and from ground predators. It's currently the nesting season, so one of the pair sits on the nest whilst the other goes off to sea to feed...for up to 10 days at a time. When he or she comes back, they change position, and the starving one disappears off for an extended squid binge.
We were fortunate to also see two albatrosses circling, either attempting to land to swap over, or, more likely, younger birds showing off to try to attract a mate.
After a quick lunch at the centre's cafe, we then drove down to Weller's Rock to take a marine tour with Monarch on the MV Monarch. We had barely left the mooring when we saw a little blue penguin, New Zealand's, and indeed the world's, smallest penguin:
We then headed round the rocks to see New Zealand fur seals lounging on the rocks, a white-fronted tern, and loads of albatrosses of various kinds (there are 11 different species which hunt around here, but only the Southern royal albatrosses breed here).
We also saw spoonbills, godwits, stilts and oystercatchers but at distances too great to photograph successfully. We didn't see any whales or dolphins, but these are less common round here.
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