The Tawaki Caravan

An unusually crowded caravan of tawaki at the Northern Landing on East Shelter Island.

Although there are an estimated 110-120 tawaki breeding pairs on the island, you hardly ever see more than one or two at a time.

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On one hand, this is due to the fact that there are four main landing sites as well as a handful of smaller landings. So the 240 or so breeding adults distribute themselves quite a bit.

On the other hand, tawaki have experienced considerable hunting pressure over that past 600-800 years. So emerging from the bush in large numbers is a bad idea as it would make a penguin hunter’s life very easy.

One side effect of this is that filming tawaki is a real challenge and requires a lot of patience. But, according to the film crew that worked with us in Doubtful Sound/Patea, this made spotting tawaki so much more exciting and rewarding.